A high of 81F, humid with a light breeze and mostly overcast with the sun blazing the odd gap in the rippling cloud.
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Daily Catskills: 07/31/18
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Monthly Archives: July 2018
Daily Catskills: 07/30/18
A high of 77F, humid and overcast. Creeks still flowing well. Mushrooms popping like gems under the hemlocks.
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Daily Catskills: 07/29/18
A high of 79F and clear skies with only wisps of cloud by evening. A cool end to the week.
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Daily Catskills: 07/28/18
A high of 81F with billowing cloud and hazy sunshine. Garlic hanging in the shade.
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Mushroom Hunting
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This week’s torrential rain created ideal mushroom growing conditions and the chicken mushroom, turkey tail, ghost pipe, chaga and polypores are all ripe for the foraging. Get out there and pick them, paint them or just generally admire them before they dry, rot, or get eaten by other creatures, like the hungry bears that the July drought had forced towards more urban areas. There’s even a bolete or two in advance of their normal August season. The reservoir is high, creeks are gushing and mushrooms are glowing in the understory like little alien beings. Like a movie cliche, yesterday the dog bound off into the forest to chase a much faster creature than him, and I ran off after them both and stumbled into a grove of hemlocks dotted like acne with polypore and a carpeted with ghost pipe. The polypore pictured above is a tinder polypore, good as a fire-starter for campers, was an ancient antibiotic and a sort of chewing tobacco used by certain indigenous Alaskan tribes. Continue reading
Daily Catskills: 07/27/18
A high of 81F, overcast and humid with brief interludes of sunshine. Fields of wild thyme feed the honeybees.
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Foraging: Burdock
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Burdock is a biennial, wild invasive species that looks rather like a thistle, but is a cross between rhubarb and celery and repellent to animals because of its bitter outer layer. It’s noteworthy because of it’s initial growth of the instantly recognizable, huge, spade-shaped leaves with frilly edges that have a whitish underside. At first glance, the first year plant looks like rhubarb.
It grows better in rocky, disturbed soil like roadsides, in full sun or partial shade. We have one that’s thriving in the garden, though, in mulched earth and letting it go to seed to see if it can be cultivated because if you only have one plant you can’t really make full use of it. You really need a patch to harvest at different times. Continue reading
Daily Catskills: 07/25/18
A 76F high, overcast, soggy and humid with more rain showers.
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Daily Catskills: 07/24/18
A high of 78F, humid and sweaty with continuous rain showers.
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Bee Update: Catching a Swarm
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On a chance walkabout in the orchard between torrential rain showers this afternoon, we discovered a swarm of bees in the plum tree: an extraordinary sight to behold. Our original bees had come under attack from robber bees three weeks ago and have been having a hard time in the last few weeks, so this swarm could have been our own hive splitting in half and evacuating with a new queen. The original hive is now calm and not being robbed. (We’ll take a look in there tomorrow.)
The swarm on the plum branch seemed like a casual gift, almost accidental – like Mother Nature threw us a bone – to make up for the fact that our original hive was robbed. It was nice to be with bees that were happy. The swarm was docile, as all bees without a home are, as they have nothing to protect. We had to act quickly because more rain was forecast. Continue reading
Daily Catskills: 07/23/18
Muggy and damp: torrential rain all day with a high of 74F.
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Daily Catskills: 07/22/18
A high of 78F and soggy with intermittent rain showers and brief periods of sunshine.
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Rochester Hollow, Shandaken Wild Forest
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Compared to any of the Catskills 3500 hikes, Rochester Hollow is a gentle, family-friendly hike with not much of an elevation gain from the parking lot (about 850ft), and good for dogs in hot weather because it follows a creek for the first couple of miles.
Compared to Giggle Hollow, across the valley to the south west on Belleayre, its name is rather boring, but the trail is far from dull and is the home of a memorial (pictured above) to the late naturalist John Burroughs with a small stone seating area. Though the Rochester Hollow trail is relatively gentle, it’s still a worthy trek, the whole trail being a lasso-shaped loop that’s made up of three intersecting trails blazed red, blue and yellow for a total, round-trip length of 6.5 miles that can be completed by an experienced hiker in about 3 hours. Continue reading
Daily Catskills: 07/21/18
78F and sunny with hazy clouds and a cooling breeze.
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A Nature Walk & Cocktails with The Outside Institute at Foxfire Mountain House
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Finally, a chance to meet Laura Silverman when she conducted a nature walk at the Foxfire Mountain House on Sunday. Laura has recently opened The Outside Institute and has been a guest on the radio show on WIOX and featured on this website, but we had never met in person – a common dilemma in today’s working practices. The Foxfire property – an inn and wedding venue – abuts the Catskills Forest Preserve and we had a tour of local flora and fauna that included a brace of skittish turkeys, bullrushes, ancient grape vines, mugwort, wild thyme, sumac, a lonesome tinder polypore, milkweed and some poison ivy. Poison ivy is difficult to identify, but essential if you don’t want to be itching or burning your way through summer. Did you know you can eat bullrushes? The walk was followed by cocktails using local ingredients in Foxfire’s gorgeously appointed bar. The Outside Institute has published a field guide to the Hudson and upper Delaware valleys and we’re currently working our way through it.
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Daily Catskills: 07/15/18
88F, humid and breezeless, with brilliant sunshine. A sultry day.
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John Burroughs Woodchuck Lodge Annual Meeting, July 15th
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The John Burroughs Woodchuck Lodge Annual Meeting will take place on Sunday July 15th, 2018 at 1pm.
The meeting will be open to the public and, after agenda items are discussed and trustees are voted in for another term, there will be a modest, family-friendly hike to the gorgeous new summer house, free gifts for attending (book, refrigerator magnet or CD) and light refreshments. Continue reading
Kimchee Harvest Kitchen, Grand Opening Friday July 13th
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East Branch Farms has announced their grand opening of Kimchee Harvest Kitchen on Main Street in Roxbury, on Friday 13th July from 7am, with extended hours to 6pm. This farm-to-table restaurant offers delicious, Asian cuisine using produce grown by farmer and owner Madalyn Warren and cooked by chef Toko Harada.
Kimchee Harvest Kitchen, 53470 State Highway 30, Roxbury, NY 12474.
Invasive Species Awareness Week
It’s Invasive Species Awareness Week (ISAW) in the Catskills. We have many voracious pests like the Emerald Ash Borer from Asia that is decimating the ash tree population of the Catskills. Ash trees are expected to be mostly extinct in the region in a few years’ time. Hemlock trees are also under threat from Hemlock Wooly Adelgid. The biggest way that invasive insects are transported is via wood like firewood. Never bring firewood to the Catskills from elsewhere for camping or cookouts. Always buy it here.
This week there are 17 events in the Catskills to highlight the growing problem from invasive species and help landowners and residents identify them.
Click on the Catskill Center’s link here to find out full details of all this week’s events that begin tomorrow, July 10th at 10am with a Mile A Minute Pull in Narrowsburg. This fast-growing vine threatens other native foliage by shading it out.
Daily Catskills: 07/05/18
Scattered dark clouds and passing rain showers. A high of 86F, humid and sticky.
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Daily Catskills: 07/04/18
Hot and humid, with multifarious cloud cover and late afternoon thunder. A high of 88F.
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Daily Catskills: 07/03/18
Another scorcher, humid and sweaty with a high of 94F. Much cooler in the woods.
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Daily Catskills: 07/02/18
Another sweltering day with a high of 94F that cooled off to a balmy 79F with a stiff breeze waving the trees and scattered showers. Steamy.
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Kimchee Harvest Kitchen Restaurant, Roxbury
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Something we’ve been pining for here in the Catskill Mountains is Asian food. There’s precious little of it around these parts, but now we have something really wonderful. Kimchee Harvest Kitchen in Roxbury, New York serves Korean food that is delicious, and local. The produce featured on the menu is grown by owner, farmer Madalyn Warren on her farm East Branch Farms on Route 30 in Roxbury, whose speciality is kimchee made with a variety of locally grown and foraged vegetables like dandelion, radish, rhubarb, garlic scape or cabbage. Madalyn’s mother is from Pusan, Korea and they make the kimchee together. The meat on the menu is sourced from other local farms. Continue reading
Daily Catskills: 07/01/18
A 94F scorcher, humid, sticky. Hottest day of the year so far. Time to spend a few hours in a creek.
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