It's taken seven years, but Route 28 in Ulster and Delaware counties has finally received legislative approval to become the Catskill Mountains Scenic Byway, according to a press release from New York State Senator James Seward.

Seward made the announcement on Tuesday, June 23, in what officials hoped was the last day of the legislative session, which has run close to a week over its normal schedule this year. 

The 65-mile byway runs along Route 28 from the Ulster County town of Olive to the Delaware County town of Andes, with short jogs along Route 212 and Route 42, through Shandaken, Middletown and Andes. It still must receive Gov. Andrew Cuomo's signature to become law.

State approval means that the byway will be designated on maps and will be eligible for federal grant money. It also means that someday soon you'll see the byway's signature logo, which features a bobcat paw print (above), along the roadway from Olive to Andes. 

In 2006, when word spread that Aman Resorts was going to build a high-end retreat in the Delaware County town of Andes, the locals were thrilled.

A resort, especially one run by one of the world’s most elite brands, meant local jobs, more tourists and a stronger tax base for the Andes school, which is one of the state’s smallest.

But the years went by and no resort appeared. Instead, mysterious groups of investors began to buy up the most prominent buildings on Main Street in the picturesque hamlet. After the purchases, some of the buildings that once housed retail businesses stood empty for months at a time, accumulating broken windows and other damage.

Then Hogan’s, the hamlet’s general store, closed. The building, which was bought by one of the investment groups, has been shuttered for a year, leaving Andes residents with no place to buy gas, beer or a newspaper in the hamlet. 

Above: The first strawberries of the season at Dressel Farms on June 6. Photo via Facebook. 

It's strawberry season, that momentarily magical time of year when you can eat fat, juicy, locally-grown berries by the bucketfull at U-Pick farms around the Catskills.

We're smack in the middle of the picking season this week. For most farms, the season begins at the start of June and lasts about four weeks, sometimes stretching into the first week of July. The higher up into the mountains you go, the later the season runs.

We've done our homework, and the strawberries are ripe and ready at all the Catskills farms listed below. Happy picking!

GREENE COUNTY

Story Farms
4640 Route 32, Catskill
518.678.9716
Story Farms had its first U-Pick day on June 5, and is selling them for $2 per pound. 

SCHOHARIE COUNTY

Above: Lazy Crazy Acres gelato.

Karen and Jake Fairbairn, the owners of the Arkville-based "cow-to-cone" gelato maker Lazy Crazy Acres, announced in a blog post on Tuesday, June 16 that they are shuttering their gelato business. 

The Fairbairns have run Lazy Crazy Acres since 2010. (Read our interview with them from 2012.) They are part of a new generation of Catskills dairy farmers attempting to keep their family farms going in an era of low milk prices by making "value-added" products with their milk. For them, farming came first; the gelato was a way to support their "farming addiction." 

Yesterday's announcement sheds a grim light on the hope that value-added products will save many ancestral Catskills dairy farms. 

It's unusual for New York City-based media outlets to pay much attention to the Catskills, and even more unusual for them to examine the long, often painful history of how exactly New Yorkers get their water, more than a billions gallons a day of it, from the Catskills watershed. 

But this week, WNYC radio and a news website called CityLimits.org are diving deep into the story of the Catskills watershed in their week-long The Cost of Our Water collaborative investigative series. They're airing thoughtful radio pieces and publishing long articles about the sometimes fraught relationship between the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which runs the vast system of reservoirs that dominates the Catskills, and upstate residents.