| Watershed Post

Bovina to fix its slowly sinking highway garage

Above: Metal siding on the exterior of Bovina's highway garage has buckled from the force of the building’s descent approximately four inches into the ground. Photos by Robert Cairns.

One end of the highway garage in the town of Bovina, which was built just six years ago, is sinking into the earth. Last week, the town council took action to stop it.

At the town's Tuesday, Aug. 11 council meeting, Bovina Supervisor Tina Molé said that the garage began sinking “almost immediately” after its construction in 2009.

“It's concentrated in the area of the office,” she said. “The rest of the building is fine.”

Above: Bovina's highway garage, seen here, has been slowly sinking since its construction in 2009.

Bovina Highway Superintendent Ed Weber said that the northwestern corner of the building has sunk four inches. A sloping floor is evident in his office.

“Some of the doors, you can't open,” he said. “We can still sort of open one window.”

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Hammo's Brewpub and Lodge opens in Hensonville

Ryan Fields doesn’t have to think too hard when he starts playing around with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a unicellular fungus more commonly known as yeast.

To him, it’s all elementary--the 30-year-old holds a degree in environmental science from Plattsburgh State University.

The Canandaigua native uses the organism as a key ingredient in the ales he makes from scratch at Hammo’s Brewpub and Lodge in the Greene County hamlet of Hensonville, which held its grand opening on Saturday night.

Fields has created eight beers, including a brown ale known as Mountain Goddess and one called The Hoppy Carpenter, a caramel-like malt layered with five different hops.

He’s been working 90-hour weeks to get it all right and said he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else at this stage in his life. With 16 years of restaurant experience, Fields has turned his love of brewing into his dream career.

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Bespoke lampmakers alight in Delhi

Above: Julian Peploe and David Ryan, the founders of Stone and Sawyer. Photo by Rocky Casale.

On a recent sunny morning, a fan was going full blast in the ceramics studio of Stone and Sawyer, a new lamp-making business in the Delaware County town of Delhi—but it wasn’t for the benefit of the proprietors, David Ryan and Julian Peploe, or this visiting reporter.

Rather, the breeze was aimed at a plaster mold airing out on a table. An interior design firm had commissioned a prototype for a tall, custom table lamp for a new hotel in Washington, D.C., and the stoneware body for the lamp had to be slip-cast, using the mold in question, before it could be sanded, washed, fired, sanded, washed, glazed and then fired again.

Above: Current Stone and Sawyer lamp designs. Photo courtesy of Stone and Sawyer.

“This mold needs to dry!” said Ryan, re-positioning the fan.

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Double rainbow, over the farm

Reader Robert Moses caught this great shot of a double rainbow spanning the sky over Harvey Morse's farm on Dingle Hill in Andes on Wednesday, Aug. 12.

This is the second rainbow photo we've gotten this month, and it's not just us--it really is rainbow season. The Times Herald-Record has received so many rainbow photos this week that the newspaper made a special photo gallery just to showcase them.

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Crowds dance in Fleischmanns to welcome new Torah

Above: Members of Fleischmanns' summer Spinka community accompany a new Torah to their synagogue on Main Street.

Hundreds of members of the Spinka community of Hasidic Jews led by Grand Rabbi Abraham Horowitz gathered on Sunday, Aug. 9 to welcome the arrival of a new sefer Torah—a handwritten copy of the holiest text in Judaism—to a synagogue in the Delaware County village of Fleischmanns.

“It was a very special occasion,” said Yossi Green, a spokesman for the community. “All the people were wearing their Shabbos garb, something that we only wear on Saturday and high holidays, because this occasion was so special.”

Above: The Torah procession on Sunday, Aug. 9 in Fleischmanns. Contributed photo.

Portions of Depot Street and Main Street were closed to traffic as men carried the new Torah under a chuppah canopy to the community’s synagogue. A large crowd danced in the street as music.

Later that evening, a celebratory feast was held at the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, according to Green.

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Thousands expected at Monticello's Bagel Festival this weekend

Above: Visitors to the 2014 Monticello Bagel Festival pose in front of a bagel sculpture. Photo via the Bagel Festival's Facebook page.

This Sunday, Aug. 16, the Sullivan County village of Monticello becomes the bagel capital of the world for a day during the third annual Monticello Bagel Festival.

Bagel-themed events take over main street, where you can pose with a giant bagel sculpture, hear live music, shop among street vendors, participate in the "bagel triathlon" and rub elbows with thousands of fellow bagel lovers. (The organizers are hoping for 20,000 people to attend this year -- last year, 12,000 people came.)

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BMW hits house, propane tank in Hurley

Above: A house and propane tank (white, center of photo) that were hit by a BMW on Monday, Aug. 10. Image via Google Earth.

Eight fire companies responded to a home on Glenford Wittenberg Road in the Ulster County town of Hurley on Monday night after a man in a BMW crashed into a propane tank and a nearby house, police say.

Paul Schiavo, a 30-year-old man from Mount Tremper, was heading east into a 90-degree turn when he drove off the road at 10:50 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 10, according to a press release from the New York State Police. Schiavo hit a guard rail, then a rock embankment and then drove off the road entirely into a house and a propane tank located on the property of 173 Glenford Wittenberg Road, police say.

Highly combustable propane began to leak out of the tank after the crash, and soon first responders from eight local fire departments were on the scene.

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Ulster County Sheriff's Office

propane

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13 places to rent bicycles in the Catskills

Above: Bike rentals at the Roxbury General Store in Roxbury. Photo via the Roxbury General Store's Facebook page.

The Catskills are a bicycler’s paradise with hundreds of miles of trails and roads perfect for bikers of all skill levels. Whether you’re into off-road mountain biking, pedaling the pavement on the scenic byways or taking a relaxing ride with your family, it doesn’t take long to find an adventure that suits your needs.

Luckily, you don’t have to haul your bike up the mountains or make a pricey gear investment for occasional use. Outfitters, bike shops and other establishments offer mountain and road bicycle rentals across the Catskills. Here are 13 places to rent bikes.

DELAWARE COUNTY

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Accessible Catskills hiking, camping and outdoors

Recreation and the outdoors are not just for able-bodied people. Adults and children with physical challenges benefit from exercise and the balance that comes from nature and fitness. Here are some opportunities that allow everyone equal access to the Catskills.

TRAILS FOR ALL

With their gentle grades, rail trails — former railroad beds turned into trails — are accessible to everyone. Try the 26-mile CATSKILL SCENIC TRAIL (Bloomville to Roxbury, catskillscenictrail.org) or the 22-mile WALLKILL VALLEY RAIL TRAIL (Wallkill to Kingston, wvrta.org), which boasts the Rosendale Trestle, a soaring bridge that crosses the Rondout Creek. A .75-mile paved loop and a paved trail to the Esopus Creek surrounds the CATSKILL INTERPRETIVE CENTER (Mount Tremper, catskilliinterpretivecenter.org) which just opened last month.

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Bloomville man killed, wife injured when golf cart collides with train

Above: An aerial image of the railroad tracks in the village of Otego. Image via Google Earth.

A Delaware County couple riding in a golf cart with their dog was hit by a train while crossing railroad tracks in the Otsego County village Otego on Sunday, Aug. 9, and the husband and dog were killed, according to police and media reports.

Charles W. Turk, 57, was found dead near the tracks by New York State troopers under the overturned golf cart, according to a press release from the New York State Police. His wife, 58-year-old Cynthia E. Turk, was found lying nearby with two broken legs. The couple's dog was found dead nearby, according to the Daily Star.

Cynthia Turk was transported to Albany Medical Center and is expected to survive.

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