The Catskills beer boom shows no signs of slowing down in 2015.
New breweries continue to open: the Hunter Mountain Brewery (7261 Route 23A Hunter, 518-263-5231) announced its launch on April 1, and the Rip Van Winkle Brewing Company is now operating on the premises of Angela's Italian Restaurant (now Angela's Pizzeria and Brewery) in Catskill, and has a ribbon-cutting scheduled for May 12.
A year ago, on April 23, 2014, the Delaware County Board of Supervisors voted to ask the New York State Legislature to impose a 2 percent occupancy tax on room and hotel rentals in Delaware County.
But despite broad support for the so-called bed tax among the county leaders -- 17 out of 19 supervisors voted in favor of the tax last year -- the plan fizzled in at the state level, dying ignominiously in committee. (That may have had something to do with a groundswell of opposition among Delaware County hotel owners against the plan.)
Now the bed tax plan is back. On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, the Delaware County Board of Supervisors once again voted to approve a resolution asking the state legislature to approve a 2 percent bed tax in Delaware County.
Irene Hussey and Alex Wilson, the co-owners of Wayside Cider (waysidecider.com), a brand-new cidery based on a farm in the Delaware County town of Delhi, just delivered their first batch of hard apple cider to shops, bars, and restaurants in the Catskills, the Hudson Valley and New York City this week.
Hussey and Wilson, who are business partners, are an unlikely pair. Hussey, a Delhi native, is a stone mason, but she’s been homebrewing and making fermented apple cider since her early 20s. Her parents and her brother make cider as well — it’s something of a family tradition.
Wilson, on the other hand, is far from a native; born and raised in England, he ended up in New York City to study film, and stayed after meeting his wife, who is a media attorney in Manhattan. The pair bought a cabin in Hamden as an escape from urban life, and Alex quickly fell in love with the area.
“You can catch trout in the stream, you can hike in the mountains for miles, ride horseback every night,” he said. “It was like paradise to me.”
Even well into April, ice still lingers on many lakes and reservoirs in the Catskills. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection issued a reminder to fisherman on Thursday, April 16 to stay off the city's Catskills reservoirs until they are ice-free.
This shot of the ice slowly receding on Dixie Lake was taken at Hanofee Park in Liberty by John of Catskills Photography on April 12 and shared in the Watershed Post's Flickr pool.
Will State Assemblyman Pete Lopez, who represents portions of the Catskills in Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, run for U.S. Representative's Chris Gibson's vacant seat in Congress in 2016?
Left: State Assemblyman Pete Lopez. Image via his official website.
It depends on what newspaper you read. The Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, April 15 that Lopez has formally announced his intention to run.
A 61-year-old Walton resident was seriously injured when he crashed his Harley Davidson motorcycle on Route 10 in Walton on Tuesday, April 14, according to the Delaware County Sheriff's Office.
Kenneth G. Kokoszka was riding south on Route 10 near Bob's Brook Road when he "lost control and left the roadway before overturning the motorcycle in [a] ditch," a sheriff's press release states. The cause of the crash is still under investigation, but investigators have ruled out alcohol as a factor.
Kokoszka was airlifted to UHS Wilson Memorial Hospital in Johnson City by helicopter, the press release states. The Walton Reporter has photos of the helicopter airlifting Kokoszka after the crash.
Bryan Graham, the owner of Fruition Chocolate (3091 Route 28, Shokan, 845-657-6717, tastefruition.com) grinds his own cocoa beans, then turns them into simple, small-batch craft chocolate bars in flavors like brown butter milk chocolate and rustic crunch (cocoa nibs, cinnamon and vanilla).
Fruition's chocolate has won national awards—a gold from the Good Food Awards and two silvers from the International Chocolate Awards in 2013 alone. You can visit Fruition's storefront and chocolate factory in the Ulster County hamlet of Shokan, just off Route 28 in an unassuming strip mall.
In a long, narrow storefront in Saugerties, Lucky Chocolates (115 Partition St., Saugerties, 845-246-7337, luckychocolates.com) produces 45 flavors of truffles and other chocolate treats in back, in a Willy Wonka-like chocolate factory filled with delicious smells and busily churning mixers. On every wall, racks of chocolate cooling in pans wait to be sliced by the confectionary guitar.
Above: The sign at the Sullivan Correctional Facility. Photo by Medic18 via Wikipedia.
An inmate at the maximum security Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg is dead and three correctional officers are injured, two with "serious physical injuries," according to the Daily Freeman, the Times Herald-Record and the Sullivan County Democrat.
Details about the incident are sketchy. The THR talked to a spokesman for the corrections officers union, which has been calling for more staff in mid-Hudson prisons.
From the THR:
Bear hunters in New York's Southern Zone killed a record 1,110 bears in 2014, according to harvest figures that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation released on Monday, April 13. That's 12 percent more than the previous record of 983 bears taken in the Southern Zone in 2011.
The record harvest is likely due to a new early bear hunting season that ran from Sept. 6 to Sept. 21 in portions of the Catskills and the western Hudson Valley, DEC officials say.
Catskills hunters in in Delaware, Greene, Schoharie, Sullivan and Ulster counties killed 893 bears in 2014, according to an analysis of the DEC's hunt data by the Watershed Post. In the Catskills, hunters killed 294 bears during the new early season and 599 during the bow hunting, muzzleloading and regular seasons, which occur later in the fall.
The Catskills towns with the highest bear harvests are Hancock, with 34 bears killed; Wawarsing, with 32; Tusten, with 31; Rochester, with 27; and Mamakating, with 24.
Above: The former Methodist Church Hall in West Fulton hosts a day of festivities in West Fulton on Saturday, April 11. Photos courtesy of Panther Creek Arts.
The tiny Schoharie County hamlet of West Fulton doesn't have much in it aside from a few houses and a former Methodist Church hall. But this weekend, it will host its own day-long festival, called "Tiny Arts Day in a Tiny Town."
The festival is packed with events. There will be a family vaudeville show, an artists reception, a three-course dinner featuring meats and veggies raised nearby, live music from a jazz trio and a mini-market featuring beer from Green Wolf Brewing Co., spirits from Kymar Farm Distillery and goodies from Bearsville Bakers.
