54F by mid-afternoon, gloomy, chilly with continual afternoon rain.
© J.N. Urbanski 4pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 06/04/17
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Tag Archives: Catskills Photography
Daily Catskills: 06/03/17
66F by mid-afternoon with a cool breeze and rolling, cotton wool clouds.
© J.N. Urbanski 4pm – Usage prohibited without consent
John Burroughs’ Bookshelf
© J.N. Urbanski – Usage prohibited without consent
Since I became a trustee of Woodchuck Lodge, John Burroughs’ last home and site of his final resting place in Roxbury, NY, I’ve become fascinated with his bookshelves. He left behind a vast collection of Atlantic Monthly magazines and (pictured above) a sturdy collection of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Atlantic Monthly is still published to this day and is a progressive periodical devoted to covering “news and analysis on politics, business, culture, technology, national, international and life”, but what was it like back then? Last month, at one of Woodchuck Lodge’s Wild Saturday events, I had just about enough time to flick through most of an Atlantic Monthly magazine from April 1923 and took photographs of what I considered the most interesting bits (below). I cannot help but wonder what John Burroughs himself thought when he read about Mrs A trying desperately to avoid “social suicide”. Continue reading
Catskills Cocktails: Gin & Spruce
© J.N. Urbanski – Usage prohibited without consent
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I’ve been making natural sodas with forsythia and spruce tips. I’ve discovered that spruce tip syrup goes particularly well with whiskey, too, like the forsythia, which made a tasty Catskills Collins. I’m also working on rhubarb juice that makes a first-rate bitter addition to cocktails for people who find bitters too intense or overpowering for their taste. Here are a couple more refreshing cocktails for the summer.
Daily Catskills: 05/22/17
58F by mid-afternoon, overcast and gloomy with hovering mist and sporadic rain.
© J.N. Urbanski 2pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 05/20/17
75F by mid-afternoon with rippled, early morning clouds evaporating in the brilliant sunshine.
© J.N. Urbanski 4pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 05/19/17
75F by mid-afternoon, sunny with wispy cloud. Clouds of yellow and green pollen coursing through the air and gathering on cars, barns and houses as if spring can’t stop sneezing. The may flies endure.
© J.N. Urbanski 3.30pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Zephyr’s Chili Bowl
© J.N. Urbanski – Usage prohibited without consent
The Zephyr’s Chili on the dinner menu stands out for its lightness, uncharacteristic for a chili bowl, achieved by the addition of sweet, juicy chunks of tomato amongst the beans. You won’t go home with a brick in your stomach, but you’ll have enough fuel for a long walk in the country air, the wet, wet, gloomy country air. I took a couple of bites of the cheesy biscuits, wrapped the rest up in a napkin and ate them later. Where’s spring? Yesterday was warmer at 62F and cloudy with some late afternoon sun. Today: more rain. My seasonal affective disorder is only just held at bay by remembering how low the Catskills reservoirs were last year and how much they need replenishing. Spring has been more of a gastronomical tour around the mountains, ducking into restaurants, sitting at the bar and trying some of the Catskills’ best fare. Try also, Traveler’s White Tea with Hibiscus, (which also goes well as a vodka mixer).
Daily Catskills: 05/09/17
48F by mid-afternoon, overcast and gloomy.
© J.N. Urbanski 3.30pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 05/08/17
36F at 8.30am with a layer of overnight snow melting in the sun, chilly and overcast with the snow flakes swirling in the wind. 44F by mid-afternoon.
© J.N. Urbanski 8.15am – Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 05/07/17
46F by mid-afternoon, humid and overcast with continual misty rain. A good day to forage, harvest, cook and preserve.
© J.N. Urbanski 2pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 05/06/17
60F by mid-afternoon, overcast, dreary and continual rain with occasional sunny breaks in the cloud.
© J.N. Urbanski – 1.15pm Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 05/02/17
58F at 9am, raining, overcast and humid. Last night’s rain gushing down the mountains. Breezy afternoon.
© J.N. Urbanski 8.30am – Usage prohibited without consent
Ticks: Essential Oils As Repellents
© J.N. Urbanski – Usage prohibited without consent
Back when we bought our house in 2007, there no ticks and for years we walked around barefoot on our property in our forest; rolled around on the lawn; foraged; did the gardening unimpeded by these infamous insects. In retrospect, I think it might have been the elevation that saved us because we are on a ridge at about 2400 ft in Delaware County. We are quite exposed to the elements and have superb soil drainage. Even in the most torrential rain there are only a couple of small patches of our six-acre property that get waterlogged. Ticks desiccate very quickly in hot, dry conditions. I found an article in Forbes that said scientists say ticks are killed after six minutes in the dryer on hot. When we got our dog, Alfie in 2014 I found my first (and only) tick when I was throwing the ball for him, a year and six months after we rescued him. I felt it bite my wrist and flicked it off as it tried to embed. Then I went immediately to the emergency room where they told me to go home. A few days later, I drove to Kingston where a doctor prescribed me an antibiotic and gave me a free refill for the future.
Daily Catskills: 04/28/17
77F by mid-afternoon with hazy sunshine. Asparagus sundial.
© J.N. Urbanski 5pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Daily Catskills: 04/27/17
75F by mid-afternoon with hazy sunshine after a gloomy start to the day, following a few sombre, rainy days. Spring springs once more.
© J.N. Urbanski 3pm – Usage prohibited without consent
Catskills Conversations: Rebecca Andre
© Victoria Weeks of Verglas Media – Usage prohibited without consent
UD: What brought you to the Catskills?
RA: My husband Mark and I would travel north from our Pennsylvania home just on a whim. This was before we had our daughter Isabella. We always ended up coming home from Lake Placid, the Adirondacks or wherever we ended up, through the Catskills. After we had our little girl and we weren’t traveling around the world anymore, we decided to get a vacation home here. Then once my daughter was of age to go to kindergarten, we made a decision to move here, so that she could start kindergarten here and not have to move mid-term.
Daily Catskills: 04/24/17
71F by noon, warm with hazy sunshine.
© J.N. Urbanski 1.30pm
Daily Catskills: 04/23/17
68F by mid-afternoon: clear skies, hot and sunny.
© J.N. Urbanski 5.20pm
Daily Catskills: 04/22/17
48F, overcast and gloomy. Chilly in historical reading rooms.
© J.N. Urbanski 1pm
Daily Catskills: 4/21/17
57F by mid-afternoon, humid and gloomy. Still life with scents.
© J.N. Urbanski 5pm
Daily Catskills: 04/20/17
50F at 9am, fog receding into the mountains leaving a dewy landscape. 61F by mid-afternoon with torrential early evening rain. Wet.
© J.N. Urbanski 9.20am
Daily Catskills: 04/19/17
55F by mid-afternoon, overcast, humid, and raining. Spring takes a break.
© J.N. Urbanski 9.30am
Donate
© J.N. Urbanski 6/16/15 12.39
On my jaunts around the neighborhood, I regularly bump into people who love Upstate Dispatch. Last week, a reader told me: “I love the site! I just wish there was more of it”. Me too!
Upstate Dispatch takes hundreds of hours per month to research and write. All of the food and drink you see reviewed here has been paid for, with one exception, and where tickets are sold to local cooking, foraging, writing and art classes, they have been purchased. In the past, when we’ve had contributors, we have paid them. As I a writer, I believe artists and writers should not have to work for free. We are also an advertisement-free site, so we rely on donations.
If you love reading Upstate Dispatch, please consider donating. Future donations will fund a small summer arts and literary studio in the local village for Upstate Dispatch. We want to expand our coverage over the summer, move into the community, and revive the Catskills Conversations series, shedding more light on our local luminaries and their stories.
Lastly, I want to thank our past donors who have expressed their appreciation of Upstate Dispatch in a meaningful way. I’m sincerely and immensely grateful for the love!
Please find our donation page here.
Happy Spring!
J.N. Urbanski
Daily Catskills: 04/18/17
55F by mid-afternoon, mostly clear and sunny with distant clouds on the horizon.
© J.N. Urbanski 5pm
Daily Catskills: 04/17/17
68F by mid-afternoon, with hazy sunshine and breezy. Tiny rhubarb emerges.
© J.N. Urbanski 2pm
Daily Catskills: 04/16/17
79F by mid-afternoon with a cool breeze and cotton wool clouds that turned grey and burst early evening.
© J.N. Urbanski 4.20pm
Daily Catskills: 04/15/17
62F and sunny with wispy clouds. The forest springs to life under the hemlocks.
© J.N. Urbanski 10am
Daily Catskills: 04/14/17
60F by mid-afternoon, clear skies and sunny with a slight chill in the air.
© J.N. Urbanski 3.30pm
Catskills Food Guide 2017
© J.N. Urbanski
I’m proud to have had the opportunity to contribute text and images to this year’s Catskills Food Guide published by the Watershed Post that hit the stands today. I’ve tried many of the region’s burgers and sandwiches for the WP. I’ve interviewed and photographed local producers and store-owners too, but the best assignment I’ve ever had was interviewing Ray Turner, an eclectic old-timer who traps eel on the Delaware River in a gigantic weir that he built with his own hands. The weir is truly to be seen to be believed – constructed with available stone and wood – and the man himself is a true Catskills character. He has a pet emu. We had some seriously eccentric exchanges. He only likes Black Labradors:
Him: “The only good dog is a lab, all the others are goats as far as I’m concerned.”
Me: “I LOVE goats!”
Him: “…”
I hadn’t been at his establishment an hour before he had me in a pair of thick rubber waders in a canoe out on the river.
Me: “None of this equipment likes water”.
Him: “No standing in the canoe”.
Pick up a copy of the Catskills Food Guide at any establishment in the Catskills. The guide includes a large pull-out, color map of the region detailing the places where you can eat, drink and shop locally.
© J.N. Urbanski
Daily Catskills: 04/13/17
55F by mid-afternoon, chilly and overcast. Hazelnut catkins swaying in the breeze.
© J.N. Urbanski 2.30pm
Daily Catskills: 04/12/17
55F, humid with overnight rain, mist lingering in the valleys. 61F and sunny with an afternoon armada of clouds sailing quickly like they’re on their way to somewhere much colder.
© J.N. Urbanski 2.30pm
Daily Catskills: 04/11/17
80F scorcher, hazy, humid. Wading in cool streams, under waterfalls, shaded by pine trees.
© J.N. Urbanski 5.40pm
Spring Links
© J.N. Urbanski
Letters to a Young Farmer is both a compelling history and a vital road map – a reckoning of how we eat and farm; how the two can come together to build a more sustainable future; and why now, more than ever before, we need farmers”. And: “We are about to witness the largest retirement of farmers in U.S. history. There are now more farmers over the age of 75 than between the ages of 35 and 44″.
A story with a happy conclusion – an urban farmer saves his “gangsta garden”.
An article on how to combat ticks around your property.
The New Farmer’s Almanac Volume III from The Greenhorns, “360 pages of original agrarian content, essays, cartoons, imagery and historical snippets—harnesses the wisdom of over 120 contributors from our community of new farmers and ranchers”.
Will our senator, farm-friendly Kirsten Gillibrand run for President?
The US military “marches forward on clean energy”. New York State sees an 800% growth in solar power according to CNBC. On solar power and renewable energy for new jobs; a new solar experiment in Brooklyn; Panasonic makes a new solar panel for Tesla.
I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the best, is country life.” John Burroughs
Daily Catskills: 04/09/17
68F by mid-afternoon with wisps of cloud in an azure sky. Laundry swaying in the breeze like huge flags.
© J.N. Urbanski 3.40pm
Daily Catskills: 04/08/17
A 45F high with a bitter wind and scattered woolly clouds under brilliant blue sky. The remnants of last night’s snow lurking in the shadows. Weather gone completely bonkers.
© J.N. Urbanski 2.40pm
Daily Catskills: 04/07/17
36F at noon: thick mist, rushing rivers, overflowing tributaries, sloppy mud, snow until mid-afternoon. Spring on hold.
© J.N. Urbanski Noon
Life Drawing at Willow Drey Farm, Andes
© Sandy Finkenberg courtesy of William Duke
William Duke, owner of Willow Drey Farm is hosting a life drawing event on Thursdays from 4pm to 7pm in their beautiful barn overlooking the rolling mountains of Andes. The barn is an event space, the site of many a summer wedding and, for an artist, a gorgeous setting in which to work on figure drawing for three hours with a nude model. We’re lucky to find people willing to take their clothes off! Life drawing is a deeply meditative exercise and focussing intently for three hours really brings one’s sketching skills up to speed. If you’re interested in sitting for the group, or joining the group, please contact William Duke here.
Daily Catskills: 04/06/17
38F by 2pm and overcast with persistent heavy rain throughout the day.
© J.N. Urbanski 4pm
Daily Catskills: 04/05/17
60F by mid-afternoon with clear skies and flowing streams reflecting the blazing sun. Spring springs.
© J.N. Urbanski 6pm
Daily Catskills: 04/04/17
Torrential overnight rains continued into morning and throughout the day with a high of 50F. Mist hanging over a drenched, humid landscape: large puddles, rushing rivers, streams, gullies. New green shoots point upwards like the beaks of little hungry chicks.
© J.N. Urbanski 5pm
Daily Catskills: 04/01/17
40F at 9am, ice dripping off trees, melting snow, distant snowcaps.
© J.N. Urbanski 6pm
Daily Catskills: 03/21/17
45F at 8.30am and 51F by mid-afternoon, humid, with large piles of snow trickling into rivers, ditches and gullies.
© J.N. Urbanski 2.40pm
Daily Catskills: 03/20/17
44F at 1pm with faint wisps of cloud and brilliant sunshine reflected off the snow.
© J.N. Urbanski 8.30am
Daily Catskills: 03/19/17
46F by mid-afternoon, brilliant sunshine, two feet of soft snow acts as a giant pillow for lounging in the sun.
© J.N. Urbanski 2.30pm
Daily Catskills: 03/12/17
18F by 1pm, sunny with more skin-peeling, freeze-dried hands, thundering winds.
© J.N. Urbanski 2pm
Weekend Links: 02/23/17
© J.N. Urbanski 1.50pm
Weekend camping resets the body clock, says the BBC.
Saturday February 25th: A group reading of Macbeth with beer at Reynolds & Reynolds in Woodstock.
Cosmik Ice Cream, maker of freeze-dried ice cream that will never melt, visits Woodchuck Lodge. In these temperatures, nothing is melting up here, but for us trustees of Woodchuck Lodge, this is lovely publicity.
Governor Cuomo pledges $8 million in state funds for Belleayre Ski Resort.
Woodstock Farm Festival looking for vendors.
The Catskills’ own Lisbeth Firmin’s talk “Painting and Prints” on March 17th at William & Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education in North Carolina.
Catskill Center is accepting applications for the Platte Clove Artist in Residence Program.
Daily Catskills: 02/15/17
37F by 2pm with persistent snow flurries.
© J.N. Urbanski 2.30pm
Daily Catskills: 02/09/17
18F by 1pm with a foot-deep blanket of overnight snow and high winds kicking up the powder into a misty spray.
© J.N. Urbanski 2pm
Daily Catskills: 02/05/17
28F by mid-afternoon and overcast with a glassy silver-grey sky and snow flurries on the peaks.
© J.N. Urbanski 11.30am
Weekend Links: Another January Closes
© J.N. Urbanski
Leave it to the inestimable Park Rangers to impress us with their louche cool and a rogue Twitter account – and those fantastic outfits. Get all the other hilarious rogue Twitter accounts here at CNN from NASA and other regional Park Service employees.
Tonight, a Scottish Weekend begins at the historical Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz.
Catskill Park Coalition Information Session at the Catskill Center tomorrow, Saturday January 28th.
Next Friday, February 3rd, The Annual Winter Hoot at the Ashokan Center.
For writers, a Museum of Linguistics is arriving in Washinton DC called “Planet Word”.
Upstate Dispatch Retro Links
© J.N. Urbanski
A local cocktail, Vly Creek Vodka Lemonade with local maple syrup and vodka.
My description of the most breathtakingly beautiful climb on the Catskills 35, Balsam Mountain. My first peak on my mission to hike the Catskills 35, Panther Mountain. By the way, don’t steal signs! Hikers rely on them.
My thoughts on being introduced to camping.
A spring day out to plan: a swim in Big Pond, then a visit to buy some local trout.
Daily Catskills: 01/22/17
Early morning fog hovering in the valleys and 50F by mid-afternoon with slushy snow on the peaks, running waterfalls and brilliant sunshine.
© J.N. Urbanski 8.20am
Daily Catskills: 01/18/17
34F at 9am, overcast, recovering from overnight ice storm. Every leaf, branch, blade, needle trapped in a glassy prison. House covered in icy granola.
© J.N. Urbanski 8.45am
Weekend Links: 01/14/17
© J.N. Urbanski
A Call For Entry at the Center for Photography in Woodstock: CPW’s WOODSTOCK AIR is a residency program for US-based artists and critics/scholars/curators of color, working in photography. Deadline is Monday January 16th.
A Writer’s Evening at the Stamford Library, 117 Main Street, Stamford, NY on Monday January 16th at 7pm. Sign up to present your latest work.
Governor Cuomo announced plans to develop a hiking trail across New York State by 2020. The plan include “filling in” gaps between already existing trails in NYS. This amazing trail, once laid, will be the longest in the nation and connect Lake Erie in Buffalo to the Capital Region and New York City to Canada (connecting with the Capital Region).
If you’re interested in hiking the Catskills 35, join the Catskills 3500 Club. Sign up for scheduled hikes. Next week Saturday January 21st, there is a schedule bushwhack (no marked or maintained trail) to North Dome and Sherrill Mountains. Peaks that have no trail are easiest to navigate in winter when there is no foliage blocking your view.
Buy or sell your produce through Lucky Dog Farm Hub.
The first of two workshops on Lambing and Kidding at Heather Ridge Farm, 989 Broome Center Road, Preston Hollow, NY on Saturday January 21st at 11am.
Young at Art at the Roxbury Arts Group: an art exhibit for children. Opening reception at 11am on Saturday January 21st.
The Phoenicia Library hosts Invasive Plants and How To Deal With Them next week Saturday January 21st at 10.30am – a must if your land is being taken over by invasive species.
A Beginning Farmers and Ranchers training program in Oneonta, NY beginning next month.
Arts Update: Ted Sheridan
© J.N. Urbanski
Ted Sheridan is more architect that artist, having designed the cozy studio attached to the house that he and Amy Masters share. He went into architecture because of his love of drawing which he has done since he was young: technical drawing and line drawing in pencil. “Even though computers have taken over the traditional drawing and drafting, I still hand draw a lot of my projects,” he says. As far as his artwork is concerned: “architecture is so controlled and precise, I was looking for ways to work in a medium that would work against that and be unpredictable, not be in control all the time.”