Each hunting season there is a certain amount of deer that must be harvested in order to last me through the year. Normally I first hunt those areas that are both accessible and abundant in deer. These conditions are usually met in the larger, more fertile valleys where a diversity of food and cover sources is available for wildlife. Fortunately, minimum deer harvest quotas were met early on and allowed for more time to be allocated towards hunting inaccessible areas in the mountains. Hunting these areas offers another type of hunting experience. Deer behavior and physiology can differ significantly when hunting pressure is low. Sitting in a tree-stand far away from the familiar sounds of human dwelling, the forest and its inhabitants become the focus. Read more
Above: Screenshot of a video from a Wednesday morning press conference by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and fellow Assembly Democrats on a bill that, if passed into law, will place a two-year moratorium on fracking in New York State. Source: The Albany Times-Union's Capitol Confidential blog. Watch the full video below.
A bill placing a two-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in New York State passed the Assembly by a wide margin on Wednesday, March 6, and is now headed for the Senate, according to several news reports.
Rural utility companies call it the "last mile problem": Even in places where there is a network nearby that carries data, the final connections that bring service to individual houses are the most difficult and expensive to build. In the rural Catskills, where houses are far from one another and remote from population centers, many homes and communities still lack access to high-speed internet or cable television.
State police say they caught two burglars red-handed in the process of stealing copper piping, electronics and tools from a house on Potter Mountain Road in Gilboa early Friday morning.
According to a news release from the New York State Police, troopers Jason Seaman and Mark DeMichele discovered a burglary in progress at the house, at 1:55am Friday. As they approached the house, two people attempted to drive away in a 1999 Mercury. The troopers stopped the car and found copper piping in the trunk, and a sign on the door of the car advertising "Free Salvage Removal."
Arrested were 41-year-old William Person of Northville and 52-year-old Wendy Ryan of Middleburgh, the owner of the car.
Police say Person and Ryan stole a flat-screen TV, a DVD player, and a tool box from the house, and entered a crawlspace to remove the copper piping, destroying the home's heating system.
Person was arraigned in the Town of Cobleskill court and remanded to the Schoharie County Jail in lieu of $5,000 cash bail or $10,000 bond. Ryan was released on her own recognizance. Read more
Over a year and a half since the Irene and Lee floods wreaked devastation on the Catskills, the long work of recovery is still going on.
This week, the Catskill Watershed Corporation announced a new initiative: a grant program to help nonprofits that were badly damaged in the 2011 floods. The program is open to any 501(c)3 organizations or state-chartered museums with buildings located inside New York City's Catskill-Delaware watershed. Read more
A newly-released report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends a change in the agency's definition of "rural," a shift that would make larger towns newly eligible for a variety of USDA grants.
The new definition, if adopted, would replace several different definitions currently used in different USDA grant programs with a single criterion: To be considered "rural," a community must have less than 50,000 people.
Under the old definitions, to be eligible for community water and waste disposal grants and loans, a community could have no more than 10,000 people. For community facility grants and loans, the upper limit was 20,000 people. Read more
On Wednesday, 3/6 at 6:30pm in Margaretivlle, come to a beginner's guide to online advertising on Facebook, Twitter, Google and more. Call or email Julia Reischel at 845-481-0155 or julia.reischel@watershedpost.com, or register online below.
Introduction to online advertising
Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, LinkedIn, and more: Online advertising is a billion-dollar-a-year business. But most people are mystified by how online ads work. Here’s the beginner’s guide to setting up an ad on three different sites and making sure you don’t pay too much for it.
At the end of the session, you will be able to: Read more
Hi, We're going to have a March Madness Meat Box! Choose your own selection of our frozen beef, pork, lamb and chicken cuts. Mix them up! Customize your own box! Make up a box valued around $120 and pay $100 for it! Basically we'll take 15% off your purchase of $120 or more of cuts of frozen meat and chicken. March only! (Prepared meats are excluded: sorry, no sausages, bacon, or corned beef in this deal.)
Why do we offer these discounted meat and chicken boxes in the winter? To offer a good deal to you, who continue to support us through the winter. Thank you. We are conscious that buying our products is an investment in your health as well as your cooking/eating pleasure, and cost more than conventional sources, We appreciate your commitment to us. We want to help your budget by offering discounts when we can. Our advantage is that we get to even out our inventory and help our cash flow the slower time of the year. So these special discounted boxes are good for both of us. (Note that joining our CSA can help your food bottom line year-round. Join!) Read more
The law reclassifies hydrocodone from a Schedule III to a Schedule II drug, tightening restrictions on prescribing the drug and banning automatic refills. It also establishes a new statewide online database for doctors and pharmacists to report and track controlled narcotics, dubbed the Internet System for Tracking Overprescribing, or I-STOP.
Other opiates with high addictive potential, like oxycodone, have been on the Schedule II list for some time. Many public health advocates have argued that hydrocodone deserves to be regulated more strictly, citing the drug's widespread abuse, addictive nature and the frequency of hydrocodone-related deaths. Read more
A few of the 99 cats seized in January from the home of a cat hoarder in Wright settle into their new surroundings at the Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley. Photos from the Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley's Facebook page; used with permission.
A month after 99 cats and a dog were seized from her filthy home on Route 146 in Wright, 50-year-old Irene VanDyke was arrested Monday and charged with animal cruelty, according to several news accounts.
Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, LinkedIn, and more: Online advertising is a billion-dollar-a-year business. But most people are mystified by how online ads work. Here’s the beginner’s guide to setting up an ad on three different sites and making sure you don’t pay too much for it.
