| Watershed Post

Fresh: Open Sesame

The pretty packages at your grocery store make it look so easy. Don't be fooled: Getting your lovingly handcrafted local food product onto those shelves is a byzantine process that requires sweat, start-up capital, nerves of steel, and, of course, a delicious, original product. Jill Padua, a Narrowsburg resident who has spent over a decade in the Sullivan County food business, just took a crack at it. Last fall, she shuttered her successful catering business, Jill's Kitchen, in order to begin bottling her best-selling product: her unique sesame noodle sauce. The first bottles of Open Sesame sauce rolled off the conveyor belt on March 11. Already, Padua has plenty of advice for fledgling food entrepreneurs.

Watershed Post: Why sesame sauce?

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Slaughterhouses: Missing link in the local food chain

There's a tremendous appetite out there for local foods, and it's growing. Farmers are willing to feed the market. A growing network of distributors and retailers is having great success selling food from small farms. But there's a huge gap in the local food economy, especially for meat and dairy products: Processors. Consolidation in the market has meant fewer and fewer slaughterhouses, forcing farmers to drive long distances to get their animals to market. And slaugterhouses that deal primarily with huge suppliers aren't focused on the needs of small farmers.

The New York Times has a piece today that highlights just how thin the bottleneck in the middle of the food chain is. The story hits close to home:

“There are a lot of people out there who raise great animals for us to use, and they don’t have the opportunity to get them to us because the slaughterhouses are going away,” said Bill Telepan, chef and owner of Telepan, a high-end restaurant in New York.

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Kingston Digital Corridor pitches Google for ultra-high-speed Internet

Google is going to be testing out Google Fiber, an experimental super-extra-fast broadband network, in a few places in the U.S. soon. They've invited communities to make their pitch for why Google should pick them. Kingston Digital Corridor (and Ulster County) took them up on it.

Meanwhile, many Catskills residents are still plodding along on dialup connections, if they have the Internet at all. Sorry about the giant YouTube video, guys.

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internet

kingston digital corridor

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Sullivan County realtor has a four-letter word for gas drilling

Rape.

Property owners in Sullivan County, NY and everywhere have an absolute right to decide how to use their land. This is America. When your rights and choices impact someone else who did not consent, received no compensation, and given the option, would have refused to sell the rights to their land; there’s a big problem. It’s called rape.

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Retired NY dairy farmer lays blame at Washington's door

Nate Wilson had an op-ed in the Buffalo News yesterday, in which he accused federal regulators of "whistling past the graveyard" while the U.S. dairy industry collapses.

Middletown, N. Y., cattle dealer Joe Distelburger, relates: “I spoke to a Western N. Y. bank lender with Farm Credit last night, who anticipates 20 percent failures from his accounts in the next 90 days.”

Wilson estimates U.S. dairy farmers' losses in 2009 at around $14 billion. By comparison, that's about what Bernie Madoff's investors lost.

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Farmers wanted

Last Sunday, Lissa Harris and Julia Reischel of the Watershed Post attended Farm to Market Connection, a networking conference for farmers and food buyers in Liberty, NY. It was a rare view of the local food economy: a community of farmers, foodmakers, distributors and retailers that is always thrumming with activity, but seldom gathers in one place. Here's our report.

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cheese

farming

pure catskills

saxelby cheesemongers

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"At the Nevele, there's so much to do"

As we mentioned earlier today, the Nevele Grande Resort is a shattered husk of the swank resort it used to be. Tonight, we discovered a wicked YouTube mashup that illustrates that fact. (Hat tip to Adam Bosch at the Times Herald-Record.)

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Return to normal, SUNY Delhi

At 8:13 pm, SUNY Delhi issued this brief and terrifying email to students, staff and faculty:

..........This is an ACTUAL NOTIFICATION..........

Issued By: SUNY - Delhi
Issued To: SUNY-DELHI-ALL

Headline: UPDATE: Imminent Danger. Shots fired near campus

There have been gun shots fired near campus

Lock all doors and stay inside until further notice. Police are in pursuit.

35 minutes later, all was once again well.

..........This is an ACTUAL NOTIFICATION..........

Issued By: SUNY - Delhi
Issued To: SUNY-DELHI-ALL

Headline: All Clear

The reported shooting has been determined to be false report. The individual who
is charged with falsely reporting the shooting is in police custody.

Return to normal.

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Growers sound off on wine in grocery stores

Should the state allow grocery stores to sell wine? Tonight at 7:30pm on PBS stations across the state, New York Now is asking grape growers what they think. Here's a preview:

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Cornell maple expert weighs in on this year's disastrous crop

Yesterday, we published a story and short video about this year's maple syrup yields, which some astute observers estimate are down 80% in the Catskills region.

We got an email from forester Peter Smallidge, who directs the maple program at Cornell University. Smallidge writes:

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