A high of 52F, gloomy all day with the occasional whip of wind and a chorus of tinkling as the snow drips from high places. An anonymous critter’s regular commute back and forth from a large cave into the hemlock stand melts slowly to reveal a trail of crushed ash leaves.
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We have a large rocky outcropping on the edge of the forested part of our property that juts out sharply towards our neighbor’s ten-acre forest (pictured above). This rocky area, about an half an acre in size, is essentially a pile of assorted boulders that look like they’ve been tossed down the hill, but I suspect that this pile is home to various creatures great and small. Years ago, when I was brushing my teeth, casually looking out the bathroom window, I saw a fisher cat sneaking through the back of our woods behind the house towards this rocky outcropping. Continue reading
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Cabin fever has you wondering if its possible to survive another six-month winter and why you would put yourself through another one, but there’s a reason we have winter in the Catskills. I like to think that it’s not because the earth suddenly tilts for no purpose whatsoever, as if holding its cold ass to the fire. No, winter’s for learning, seed planning, and drinking a lot of warming winter cocktails like hot toddies and mulled wine. If the earth must kick back, so can we. Continue reading
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Local, regional radio hosts and shows are finally getting the attention they deserve from the New York Times in a piece by Kirk Johnson entitled: “As Low-Power Local Radio Rises, Tiny Voices Become a Collective Shout”. I’m proud to be part of this chorus on WIOX Radio on Roxbury, Upstate New York in a show called The Economy Of, in which I tackle different subjects every other week with guests from all over the world. I’m also being considered for a Morning Edition slot from 7pm to 9pm one day a week on this station. The station and its programs are indeed incredibly diverse and informative. Started by a group of locals in a converted barn and now partnered with WSKG, a NPR affiliate, WIOX is the little engine that could, covering everything local in the Catskill Mountains, streaming online and locally on 91.3FM.
If you missed it, this morning my show was on farming. My guest was Dana DiPrima, aka Farm Girl, who writes the blog The Pitchfork about keeping a small farm on her property in Sullivan County. I’ve been farmer’s advocate since I began my show almost seven years ago. Time flies!
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0F (-17C) at 2pm with a wind chill of -19F (-28C). Face-cracking, eyeball-freezing, toe-numbing, finger-deadening cold for all except the black lab who is in his element.
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Quickly making a roaring fire is a fine art and in these plummeting temperatures the art form becomes a necessity when you’re starting a fire in an extremely cold cabin.
Materials pictured above from left to right: paper, tinder, kindling and thin, light logs of “starter” wood.
The real secret for great tinder is a certain type of egg box made with compressed paper or cardboard that is a strong enough structure to support the pyre while it’s burning, but light enough to burn easily. Paper alone is too light and burns down quickly. Once it has burned down, the embers can dampen your fire. Egg boxes burn slowly and cleanly. You can also use paper towel tubes, but the issue here is that you need to have saved them in advance. Continue reading
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We enter the New Year 2018 with formidably low temperatures. Christmas was bitterly cold and New Year’s Eve’s overnight low is predicted to be -8F. I cannot remember it ever being much lower than zero in previous winters. It feels like a thorough cleansing, as if Mother Nature wants to properly destroy everything before she resuscitates the landscape next Spring. Previous milder Winters have been blamed for the prevalence in ticks, for example. This year – this past Fall – we had a record number of ticks on our ridge and extremely low winter temperatures do their part to kill the eggs and larvae hibernating in the soil. Continue reading
A high of 33F and cloudy with freezing rain. Mountains shrouded in mist. Tea with a friend.
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A high of 28F and overcast with a glassy, grey sky. Thick snow on the peaks.
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A high of 26F with continual, light snow.
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20F by midday and still with cloud cover moving on by the afternoon exposing a vivid blue sky.
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A morning temperature of 10F with blistering, face-numbing, phone-freezing winds, rising to 17F by mid-afternoon with brief flashes of sun. Bitterly frigid.
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A high of 35F, and overcast with shimmering cloud and continuous snowfall. A quick Urdhva mukha svanasana. Yoga on the go.
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A high of 31F and overcast with brief flashes of sun through the rippling clouds.
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A balmy 43F by mid-afternoon, bright and humid after frosty morning. The dried husks of summer’s blooms, crowned with snow, wave in the breeze on tall stalks like stakes marking the spot where spring once was.
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A high of 42F, with vivid blue ribbons of sky shining through thick streaks of cloud. A persistent breeze scatters the milkweed. Not much snow this month compared to previous years.
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Food, booze and small favors like soaps and scented candles make great gifts without costing a fortune. Plus, they can be easily mailed to friends and family members across the country. The Catskills is filled to the brim with local producers, making it ever easier to shop locally for the holidays. The Catskills also have some of the best local artists selling everything from small works to large pieces in studios across the region. Watch this space for features on local artists selling their wares during the holiday season. We’re also compiling a list of places you can cut your own Christmas tree. It’s never been more important to shop locally. For every dollar you spend locally, the community will benefit to the value of five to seven dollars. Industry in the Catskills is strictly regulated because we have to protect New York City’s drinking water. Spending money on the Catskills’ small producers keeps our regional economy afloat. Shop Upstate for the holidays. Continue reading
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Tune in to WIOX on Monday November 27th at 9am to my interview with Brian Flynn, who is running for Congress next year for New York’s 19th District.
Brian is a lifelong progressive and small business owner. He has spent his entire adult life fighting, effectively, for the type of progressive change that makes a real difference in people’s lives. Brian’s activism emerged from a very personal event almost 30 years ago. His big brother, JP, was killed in the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. This experience taught Brian that you can bring about meaningful change in Washington – if you’re organized, tireless and never stop fighting for what’s right. And Brian has been fighting for change ever since. He has marched in the halls of congress and the UN, held big businesses accountable, ensured terrorists are convicted, supported public education and fought for environmental protections. As a union member he’s walked picket lines. He’s worked on factory floors and worked to raise the wages of hundreds of American workers. He knows what it takes to get things done and he knows that we can never stop until it gets done. Brian lives in Hunter in Greene County with his wife and two children. You can find out more about Brian by visiting his website www.brianflynn.us
A high of 39F, overcast and dull. Warmer temperatures to be found in pre-Thanksgiving drinks by a roaring fire in tasting room of local distillery.
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A high of 54F, windy with wispy cloud in otherwise clear skies and powdery snow in the shadows. Once succulent grass transforms into hay.
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A high of 33F and misty with light snow flurries all day.
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A high of 46F, windy with a mix of sun and clouds. Late night snow swirls on the peaks, sprinkling the thatched landscape with a temporary dusting of icing sugar.
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A base layer of dirt, then grass, then a thick wedge of insulation and finally, twigs topped off with a small, vacated wasp’s nest and a large insect exoskeleton, probably a caterpillar/butterfly. A once crowded bird box now getting repaired and cleaned out for new tenants.
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After this week’s election victories, Monday’s radio show will feature two prominent guests: Jeff Senterman and Julia Reischel. From 9am to 9.30am, we will hear from Jeff who is Executive Director of the Catskill Center. Many people ask me what the Catskill Center does and now here is your chance to find out if you didn’t know. From 9.30am to 10am, we’ll hear from Julia Reischel, a former local journalist and co-founder of the now-retired Watershed Post, who is now going into politics.
You can stream the show online on WIOX on Monday November 13that 9am. Let’s hope it’s warmer than today’s 22F.
A frosty morning in the 20s and clear skies, rising to 43F by mid-afternoon, overcast and moody.
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38F by mid-afternoon and bitter with enough snow dropped at 4pm to transform the landscape to a winter wonderland.
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A high of 52F, humid with intermittent rain showers.
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A little warmer at 60F by noon and overcast with scattered rain showers. Always hike in light colored clothing, so you can easily spot ticks crawling up your leg, clinging to the fibers of your trousers like tiny, inexorable acrobats.
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As a friend pointed out, there’s a lot of content on Upstate Dispatch and, moreover, a great deal of content that doesn’t much get read, or hasn’t been read by regular readers.
So, as winter approaches and I scout around for ideas for winter content, I offer some links to past work that are first person articles that are desperately in need of a follow up.
Deer hunting season approaches: a link to a 2015 post I wrote about hunting.
Here’s the first post I wrote about our dog, Alfie and a post on the cost of food.
A guide to safe and considerate hiking in Upstate New York, that needs to be updated for winter. In fact, scroll through the entire hiking section of the site.
My first Catskills 3500 ascent: Balsam Mountain two years ago.
Eat Your Weeds, instead of throwing pesticide on them that ruins the water table.
Scroll through last year’s November. The gift guide still holds.
And finally, writing of gifts, here’s our donate page. UD takes thousands of hours a year to write and does not do paid or sponsored content or advertising.
Last night’s rain storm turns dangerous with blustery winds downing trees, causing power failures and fast-moving rivers, ending abruptly by afternoon. A high of 50F and late afternoon sunshine. Update: snow reported on the peaks.
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60F humid, overcast with blustery winds and dashing rain getting stormier going into the evening.
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60F with a mix of sun and cloud and a cooling breeze.
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His woodshed is falling down…
The cost to rebuild Mr. Burroughs’ woodshed is $2000. John Burroughs’ Woodchuck Lodge thanks the O’Connor Foundation for a $1000 grant. Please help us match it.
Find the Woodchuck Lodge donation page here or contribute by mail to Woodchuck Lodge, Box 492, Roxbury, NY 12474
Help Mr. Burroughs rebuild. It’s the neighborly thing to do.
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The cold snap has me scrambling for a pile of books. The winter reading list has been hastily assembled from the wish list after a visit to the library.
Agatha Christie, a good teacher for the writer of scripts or dialogue-focused narrative; Pullman, to get lost in someone else’s magical universe; Eddie Izzard, for English humor; Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes astrophysics easy and engaging; Tim Marshall makes geopolitics fun; Salman Rushdie, just because I’ve had this first edition for ten years and never read it; Ta-Nehisi Coates, because he explains it so well in such beautifully written non-fiction; John Burroughs, because that’s required reading for a board member at John Burroughs’ Woodchuck Lodge; Mark Twain, because a dip into Roughing It is as refreshing as a cool drink of local ale.
In the world of physics, you are immortal because the light (photons?) that bounced off you while you were alive will still be hurtling through the universe after you’re gone. I imagine it being a three-dimensional traveling x-ray, but I’m hoping DeGrasse Tyson will let me know. You think about these things when you’re so close to nature and you don’t think she’s watching. Walking the dog on a clear night on top of a ridge is like wading through stars.
Find more local reading at The Purple Mountain Press on Main Street in Fleischmanns. Buy local. Support your local library.
An overnight rain storm blows into a humid, misty morning at 65F. Tree waving, leaf blowing and the last of the burnt orange brush covered in thick fog. 72F by mid-afternoon and calm with serene clouds. Autumn tells us it’s time to put the hammock away.
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There’s a saying that goes something like this: “you see what you want to see” and what I’m seeing lately are ticks. Loads of them. I see ticks on my dog from ten paces and now hike with a comb, and remove them before they have a chance to burrow in.
Some observations: I thought that the first tick I pulled off my dog’s hair was a piece of lint, but after looking at it, I issued a shriek and wiped the bug onto the dog bed. The thing then burrowed into the dog bed and, in hindsight, I should have waited to see how long it would take it to realize the bed was not a body. Alas, I just wanted it gone.
I combed a tick off the dog today and the tick is still on the comb, wondering what happened, ten minutes later.
Here are my latest observations:
1. Ticks are easy to spot if you study them for a while. You’re looking for something no bigger than lint, but the big difference between ticks and lint is that ticks are shiny and hard. Moreover, they are always moving, so they might be the size of, or smaller than, lint, but they writhe, and as they do so, they catch the light like little, tiny pieces of polished onyx. They stand out against even black fur, but perhaps that’s because I’m obsessed with them.
2. Ticks are like velcro: very hard to flick off. Don’t flick them. You risk flicking them on yourself, or having them cling to your finger and climb up your arm without you noticing. Use a comb to drag them off. Or firmly grab them and wipe them off onto a tree. Trying to coax them onto a stick will not work.
3. Hike in light colored clothing and be vigilant about checking.
4. Always wear a hat, because once ticks get in your hair, they’re almost impossible to spot until they’re burrowed in and blowing up. Avoid having twigs brush against your neck and shoulders. If you do, be wearing a hoodie or something.
5. To check dark clothing, hold the clothing perpendicular to a light source and watch to see if the lint moves and catches the light.
5. Ticks are killed after ten minutes in the dryer on high. I’ve always used drying racks, but if it’s a choice between Lyme Disease and using more energy, I’m using the dryer. After hiking, disrobe outdoors. Throw your hiking clothes in the dryer, including – especially – the undies. Ticks love the groin “area”. Don’t EVER just air-dry your undies after laundering if you’re an avid outdoorsperson. (Why isn’t outdoorsperson a word?) Ticks can survive any washing machine.
6. Ticks loathe essential oils. Use the oil to kill ticks or repel them. A few drops of lavender oil will kill a tick. Here’s my recipe for the repellent.
Here are links to all my other posts about ticks. Tick tubes, essential oils, and more tick tubes. Get to know these little bugs before they get to know you.
Warm, windy and humid with a moody, overcast dusk and a dip in temperatures. The last of fall is brassy, with dull copper tones, dashes of burnt orange and sienna in the half-empty brush. Apples hang in abundance on bare trees like winter ornaments: a forgotten, wild harvest.
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Another blazing autumn day with a high of 80F, hazy sunshine and steady breeze.
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A high of 67F and balmy with clear skies.
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This year, the vibrant, yellow fall hues stole the show very early on, at the end of September, and kept their lead throughout the month of October. Golden confetti lay strewn across roads and fields for weeks. The yellows were still in the lead until the reds popped into the mix, but they remain sparse, dull and muted. Some green, on mighty oak trees, still remained as of Monday, when our Daily Catskills coverage unexpectedly withered, shriveling up like our unpicked apples that hang forlornly in the bare trees like forgotten holiday decorations. Some tall oaks on the peaks are still hanging onto their vivid green, but they too are turning golden yellow.
The oranges came out in the last week or two, but they’re dusty and subdued; burnt orange, sienna and burnished copper tones linger amidst the brush.
Temperatures this fall have been about 10 degrees (fahrenheit) higher than last year. We were expecting a glorious, riotous autumn like the spectacular, fiery orange fall we had two years ago, but instead we had kind of warm, extended summer. Summer has stolen our autumn.
Go back in time through Upstate Dispatch’s archives from October 2015 and October 2016 so see just how different it is this year. After all, that’s why we take a picture a day.
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A chilly morning, with the day’s high at 60F, breezy with hazy cloud.
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A high of 70F, humid and overcast with hazy, foggy cloud that brought late afternoon rain.
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75F, humid, sunny with hazy cloud, lazy breeze, blazing fall colors.
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71F by mid-morning, humid, with patches of morning fog and occasional turbulent breeze scattering the leaves. Surly. Update: 77F high with a strong, leaf-churning wind and more rain.
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A cloudy, moody start, with a mix of sun and cloud throughout the afternoon. A high of 72F. Vivid reds bloom in the landscape.
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Clear skies and a 75F high. Warm in the sun, but cool in the shade. Humid and slightly steamy. Fall is slightly late out of the gate.
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A clear, frosty morning, rising to a high of 67F. Initial muted dashes of red amidst the yellowing. Fall has yet to show its true colors.
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After an overnight frost dissolving into a misty morning, 70F by mid-afternoon and sunny.
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After a foggy start, 60F by mid-afternoon and warm in the sun.
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Sunflowers are astonishingly beautiful and uplifting, towering over the farm like sentry guards radiating happiness, accumulating and distributing sunshine. They’re also packed with thousands of highly nutritious, edible seeds. Once they start to droop towards the ground, you may have to compete with the birds, chipmunks, and squirrels, who climb up them in search of the seeds and break the stems. When the blooms are resting on the ground, like they’re on some floral time-out, they seeds are fair game. You can either wrap the live heads in paper to stop animals from eating them, or you can cut the heads off completely even before they’re ready to harvest.
The seed is the white pellet underneath the yellow face of the bloom (pictured above). They develop a black strip as the flower dies, eventually turning a dusky, dark grey/black (pictured below). They are even delicious like this without any cooking, and packed full of raw nutrients like iron, calcium, vitamin B-6 and high in potassium and magnesium. Continue reading
58F by 6.30am, balmy with clear skies and sunrise ushering in dappled cloud. 65F by mid-afternoon.
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60F by 7am with fog receding quickly into the valley. Balmy autumn mornings. Update: another 90F scorcher. Bikini weather.
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A high of 85F with morning fog disappearing into the mountains. Sunny with scant cloud. The sunflowers express how we feel about summer ending.
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A high of 90F, blazing hot and humid.
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A high of 84F with clear skies of hazy blue. Sunday scorcher.
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