The 2015 Catskills Food Guide is out. Click here for more info. - Ed.

Each year, we ask readers of the Watershed Post and our Catskills Food Guide to send us their best photos of Catskills food and farms. This year, 32 photographers entered our 2015 Catskills Food Guide Photo Contest. 

Thanks to our contest sponsor, Peekamoose Restaurant & Tap Room in Big Indian, who generously awarded a $75 gift certificate to our grand prize winner. 

Thanks to everyone who entered. To see all of those great photos, click here. 

Grand Prize Winner

Nicole Day Gray took this shot on Monday, Feb. 9 at the Freshtown grocery store in the Delaware County village of Margaretville, where a mob of hungry ducks congregate to await kindhearted shoppers who toss them crumbs. Sometimes, the ducks really outnumber the shoppers. Used with permission. 

Update: Some readers have asked us point out that feeding ducks can harm those very ducks. The Department of Environmental Conservation has a thoughtful fact sheet that describes how artificial feeding causes disease, overcrowding and poor nutrition, and is linked to waterfowl die-offs.

Above: Only a foundation remained after a fire destroyed a Delhi home on Friday, Feb. 6. Photo by Lissa Harris.  

A 51-year-old woman was found dead in the charred remains of her home on Maggie Hoag Road in Delhi on Friday, Feb. 6, according to a press release from the Delaware County Sheriff's Office.

Helen Stroppel, who owned a house at 3150 Maggie Hoag Road, was found dead in the home during a search by investigators, police say.

The fire began around 1 a.m. on Friday morning. A neighbor called 911, and when first responders arrived, the home was fully engulfed by the flames. Stroppel was nowhere to be found, police say.

Firefighters from the Delhi, Andes and Bovina Fire Departments battled the blaze.

After the fire was subdued, investigators from the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office, the Delaware County Cause and Origin Team, the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control Arson Bureau and the New York State Police Forensic Identification Unit began a search for Stroppel, assisted by a New York State Police Cadaver Detection police dog. During the initial search of the ruins, her body was recovered.

Above: A promotional video for the Catskill Park, produced by Catskill Mountainkeeper. 

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, at least in Albany. And until recently, the Catskills were pretty quiet when it came to asking New York’s legislature and governor for money.

That changed in 2013, when a group of organizations working together as the Catskill Park Coalition began heading to the Capitol in person for a formal lobbying effort called Catskill Park Awareness Day. The idea is to knock on the doors of legislators and let them know, in person, that the Catskill Park exists, and that it needs support in the state’s budget.

“Our goal is to encourage Catskill stakeholders to become advocates for the resources needed to make the Catskill Park more accessible and to increase NYS's commitment to fund capital improvements and stewardship,” wrote Alan White, the executive director of the Catskill Center, one of the Coalition’s founding members, in an email to the Watershed Post. 

Above: Firefighters battle a structure fire on White Road in the town of Middletown on Feb. 4. Photos by Julia Reischel.

A house at 410 White Road in the Delaware County town of Middletown burned on the afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 4. 

Alice and Anthony Curley, who have rented the house for several years, were out at a doctor's appointment on Wednesday afternoon when the blaze began, said Janine Miller, Alice's daughter. 

"They were only gone for two hours or three hours," Miller said. 

Gene Rosa, the Chief of the Margaretville Fire Department, said that the Delaware County Cause & Origin team has ruled that the blaze was "an accidental fire having to do with the heating system."

The house had two heating systems, a propane furnace inside the house and a wood fired hot air furnace outside the house. (In a previous version of this story, I referred to this outdoor furnace as an outdoor wood boiler, which it is not. "It's a hot air furnace," Rosa said. "It's kind of unique.") 

It is unclear which heating system started the fire, Rosa said.