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Agricultural History

Mount Lebanon Heritage Herb Festival Planned

May 30, 2014 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

PostcardHerbFest copyThe third annual Mount Lebanon Heritage Herb Festival celebrates the illustrious past of herbs in town history as well as the Native American and Shaker traditions in the heart of the Lebanon Valley of New York, considered the birthplace of the herbal pharmacy in the United States.

The event takes place on Saturday, June 7, 2014 from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on the historic grounds of Darrow School, at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village.   More than eighteen talks, walks and workshops explore the role of herbs in food, gardens, medicine and health from the early days of the Native Americans to current practices. [Read more…] about Mount Lebanon Heritage Herb Festival Planned

Filed Under: Events, History, Hudson Valley - Catskills Tagged With: Agricultural History, Columbia County, Conferences, Culinary History, Gardens - Landscape Architecture, Medical History, Mount Lebanon Shaker Museum, Shakers

Mount Lebanon Shaker Museum Adds 61 Acres

May 22, 2014 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

new lebanon shaker museumThe Shaker Museum – Mount Lebanon, in New Lebanon, Columbia County, NY, has completed the acquisition of 61 acres of land adjacent to its North Family site, part of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Society National Historic Landmark District.

The parcel, known as the North Pastures, was purchased from the Darrow School, whose campus consists of the former Church and Center Families of Mount Lebanon’s former Shaker community. The purchase was achieved in a partnership with the Open Space Institute, a nonprofit conservation organization dedicated to preserving scenic, natural, and historic landscapes, and also with funding from a 2012 grant from New York State. [Read more…] about Mount Lebanon Shaker Museum Adds 61 Acres

Filed Under: History, Hudson Valley - Catskills Tagged With: Agricultural History, Columbia County, Historic Preservation, Mount Lebanon Shaker Museum, Religion, Shakers

New York Tenant Farmers: Little-Used Resources

May 19, 2014 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

Wheat imageProfessional genealogist Jane E. Wilcox of Forget-Me-Not Ancestry in Kingston will present a talk on New York tenant farmers at the New York Public Library in New York City on Tuesday, May 20 at 5:30 p.m.

Wilcox’s presentation, “Looking for Your New York Tenant Farmer: Little-Used Resources,” will focus on the tenants of the major colonial manors and patents of the Hudson Valley between Westchester and Rensselaer and Albany counties. Wilcox will discuss the types of records that were created in New York’s manorial lease-holding land system and will explain how and where to find documents that recorded the lives of the tenants. Included with the talk will be a handout with genealogical resources. [Read more…] about New York Tenant Farmers: Little-Used Resources

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, Events, History Tagged With: Agricultural History, Albany County, Genealogy, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, New York Public Library, Rensselaer County, Rensselaerswijck

New Book Explores Life On A Putnam County Farm

October 5, 2013 by Editorial Staff 3 Comments

Life on a rocky farmLife on a Rocky Farm (SUNY Press, 2013) is a folksy look at farm life in rugged Putnam Valley (Putnam County) just as it was being transformed by industrialization and mechanization. The book couples Lucas C. Barger’s (1866–1939) eye for detail with a folksy, anecdotal style to provide an interesting depiction of both the traditional ways of farm life, and the challenges farmers faced as times changed.

Previously unpublished, Barger’s first-hand account of farm life near New York City begins in the late nineteenth century. Little had changed for well over a century in the hilly and rugged terrain of Putnam Valley, where Lucas grew up as a member of the sixth generation of Barger farmers. But as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, industrialization and mechanization decreased the demand for farm labor and farmers had to come up with alternate ways to make money. [Read more…] about New Book Explores Life On A Putnam County Farm

Filed Under: Books, History Tagged With: Agricultural History, Putnam County

Harvest Fest, Folkways Fair at Hanford Mills Museum

October 2, 2013 by Editorial Staff 2 Comments

2011 millers harvest festivalArtisans, water power, local farms, grist milling, lumberjack skills, and horse-drawn wagon rides will all be featured at the Miller’s Harvest Festival and Folkways Fair at Hanford Mills Museum (Delaware County) on Sunday, October 13, 2013.

The Museum will be operating machinery in its 1869 Gristmill, which area farmers relied on for generations. The Munson Brothers Millstone, which the Museum connected to its horizontal water turbine in August, will be featured. Guided tours of the gristmill, sawmill and woodworking shop will be offered throughout the day. [Read more…] about Harvest Fest, Folkways Fair at Hanford Mills Museum

Filed Under: Events, History Tagged With: Agricultural History, Delaware County, Hanford Mills Museum, Industrial History

Mount Lebanon Herb Festival at Historic Shaker Village

May 28, 2013 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

2nd annual mount lebanon herbfest finalThe Mount Lebanon Herb Festival will be held on Saturday, June 8, 2013, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m, rain or shine on the campus of the Darrow School in New Lebanon, NY, the historic grounds of Mount Lebanon Shaker Village.

New Lebanon has a remarkable history with herbs. Its famous warm spring feeds the Shaker Swamp in the village of New Lebanon, and that supported an extraordinary collection of wild herbs long used by Native Americans. The Shakers, who based their national headquarters in New Lebanon, expanded on the uses of these herbs and created an industry around their sales. In 1824, Elam Tilden (father of politician Samuel J. Tilden) put this knowledge toward the start of one of the nation’s first pharmaceutical companies, the Tilden Company, using herbal tinctures, extracts and compounds derived in New Lebanon that were eventually marketed around the world. [Read more…] about Mount Lebanon Herb Festival at Historic Shaker Village

Filed Under: Events, Nature Tagged With: Agricultural History, Columbia County, Gardens - Landscape Architecture, Medical History, Religion, Shakers

Albany Institute Event Featuring Hudson Valley Hops

April 9, 2013 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Albany BrewerThe Albany Institute of History & Art will be hosting its second event featuring Hudson Valley Hops on Saturday, April 20, 2013 from 4-7pm.

The event will be a celebration of the history of brewing in Albany and today’s craft beer industry in and around the Hudson Valley. Guests can sample the finest local craft beers, engage with experts in the field, enjoy an assortment of food and tour the museum galleries. [Read more…] about Albany Institute Event Featuring Hudson Valley Hops

Filed Under: Events, Nature Tagged With: Agricultural History, Albany, Albany Institute For History and Art, Culinary History, Hudson River, Industrial History

Eliakim Briggs: Horse Power Inventor

April 1, 2013 by Lawrence P. Gooley Leave a Comment

Briggs' 1834 horse treadmill BRIn the 1830s, hundreds of inventors around the world focused on attempts at automating farm equipment. Reducing the drudgery, difficulty, and danger of farm jobs were the primary goals, accompanied by the potential of providing great wealth for the successful inventor. Among the North Country men tinkering with technology was Eliakim Briggs of Fort Covington in northern Franklin County.

Functional, power-driven machinery was the desired result of his work, but while some tried to harness steam, Briggs turned right to the source for providing horsepower: the horse. [Read more…] about Eliakim Briggs: Horse Power Inventor

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, History, Nature Tagged With: Abolition, Adirondacks, Agricultural History, Franklin County, Genealogy, Industrial History, Natural History, Underground Railroad

Farmers’ Museum Hosting Farm Museum Association

January 29, 2013 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

77th-balladeersThe Mid-Atlantic 2013 Regional Meeting of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM) will be held March 8th and 9th, at The Farmers’ Museum, in Cooperstown, New York.

Founded in 1970, the ALHFAM serves those involved in living historical farms, agricultural museums and outdoor museums of history and folklife. [Read more…] about Farmers’ Museum Hosting Farm Museum Association

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Agricultural History, Conferences, Cooperstown, Farmers' Museum, Living History

CFP: Sugar and Beyond Conference Planned

October 12, 2012 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The John Carter Brown Library seeks proposals for a conference entitled “Sugar and Beyond,” to be held on October 25-26, 2013, and in conjunction with the Library’s Fall 2013 exhibition on sugar in the early modern period, especially its bibliographical and visual legacies. The centrality of sugar to the development of the Atlantic world is now well known.

Sugar was the ‘green gold’ that planters across the Americas staked their fortunes on, and it was the commodity that became linked in bittersweet fashion to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Producing unprecedented quantities of sugar through their enforced labor, Africans on plantations helped transform life not only in the colonies but also in Europe, where consumers incorporated the luxury commodity into their everyday rituals and routines.

“Sugar and Beyond” seeks to evaluate the current state of scholarship on sugar, as well as to move beyond it by considering related or alternative consumer cultures and economies. Given its importance, sugar as a topic still pervades scholarship on the Americas and has been treated in many recent works about the Caribbean, Brazil, and other regions. This conference thus aims to serve as an occasion where new directions in the study of sugar can be assessed.

At the same time, the connection of sugar to such broader topics as the plantation system, slavery and abolition, consumption and production, food, commodity exchange, natural history, and ecology has pointed the way to related but distinct areas of inquiry. Although sugar was one of the most profitable crops of the tropical Americas, it was not the only plant being cultivated.

Furthermore, although the plantation system dominated the lives of African and other enslaved peoples, they focused much of their efforts at resistance around the search for ways to mitigate or escape the regime of sugar planting. The organizers thus welcome scholars from all disciplines and national traditions interested in exploring both the power and limits of sugar in the early Atlantic world.

Topics that papers might consider include but are not limited to the following:

–The development of sugar in comparative context
–The rise of sugar and new conceptions of aesthetics, taste, and cultural refinement
–Atlantic cultures of consumption
–Coffee, cacao, and other non-sugar crops and commodities
–Natural history and related genres of colonial description and promotion
–Imperial botany and scientific programs of agricultural expansion and experimentation
–Alternative ecologies to the sugar plantation
–Plant transfer and cultivation by indigenous and African agents
–Provision grounds and informal marketing
–Economies of subsistence, survival, and resistance
–Reimagining the Caribbean archive beyond sugar: new texts and methodological approaches

In order to be considered for the program, send a paper proposal of 500 words and CV to jcbsugarandbeyond@gmail.com. The deadline for submitting proposals is December 15, 2012.

The conference organizers include Christopher P. Iannini (Rutgers), Julie Chun Kim (Fordham), K. Dian Kriz (Brown).

Photo: Havemeyers & Elder’s, later Domino, sugar refinery in New York City in the 1880s. Photo courtesy wgpa.org.

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: African American History, Agricultural History, Calls for Papers, Conferences, Culinary History, Cultural History, Indigenous History, Industrial History, Native American History, Slavery

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