History, Natural History & the Arts
With support from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation and the Saranac Lake Rotary Foundation, the Hub on the Hill has launched a fundraising campaign for new vehicles to deliver emergency food packages & local food from the Canadian Border to NYC.
Resulting from a successful partnership with AdkAction, The Hub on the Hill in the Champlain Valley is expected to deliver approximately 80,000 meals by October 1, 2020. [Read more…] about Hub on the Hill Delivery Food Program Expanding
In March, when Governor Cuomo signed the New York State on PAUSE executive order, which mandated that all non-essential businesses in New York State had to close, farmer’s markets were exempted as essential retail businesses and, as such, allowed to open or remain open.
But, as concerns about the spread of COVID-19 grew, farmers market growers, gardeners, and managers, like other small business operators, found themselves rushing to come up with innovative contingency plans to modify their operations and employ solutions that would protect their livelihoods, as well as the health and well-being of their customers, market workers, and the community at large. [Read more…] about Farmers Markets: An Alternative to a Food System in Flux
America’s meatpacking plants endure some of the highest rates of workplace injury of any U.S. job sector. COVID-19 has introduced yet another occupational hazard.
These crowded facilities have become frighteningly successful vectors for COVID-19 contagion. [Read more…] about Rethinking Meat From Farm to Table
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Warren County has announced two webinar programs focused on small-scale livestock production. [Read more…] about Small-Scale Livestock Production Webinars Planned
Although we have an abundance of food available in the United States, the past few weeks and the coming months have and will demonstrate that our food system is only as strong as the weakest link.
Food can be produced by farmers in vast amounts, but if it can’t be processed and distributed then it is not accessible to consumers. [Read more…] about Reality Check: Local Food Systems
The Adirondack Council awarded 10 micro-grants totaling over $32,000 to local farmers in an effort to address what it called the greatest short-term and long-term threats to public health in the Adirondack Park: COVID-19 and climate change. [Read more…] about Adirondack Farm Micro-Grants Awarded
Jesse Williams, a successful farmer and cheese maker in Rome, believed that farmers could maximize their profits by working together as cooperative dairies. He started a cheese factory in the n 1851 just north of Rome, NY and helped revolutionize the modern cheese industry locally and across the nation. [Read more…] about Jesse Williams’ Early Cheese Factory in Rome, NY
Just North of Rome, at the site of the current New York State Fish Hatchery, the modern cheese industry is said to have been born in 1851. Jesse Williams was a successful farmer and cheese maker but believed by working together as cooperative dairies, farmers could maximize their profits.
This led him to start what is believed to be the first cheese factory in the United States, a move that revolutionized agriculture not only locally, but across the nation. [Read more…] about Jesse Williams’ Cheese Factory Revolutionized Modern Cheesemaking
If we want to understand everyday life in early America we need to understand the everyday life of early American farms and farmers.
Roughly three-quarters of Americans in British North America and the early United States considered themselves to be farmers. So how did early Americans establish farms and what were the rhythms of their daily lives?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Richard Bushman, the Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, joins us to investigate farms and farm life in early America with details from his book, The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History. [Read more…] about Farms & Farm Families in Early America
Heritage vs. Heirloom Gardening, a talk by horticulturist Diana K. Weiner has been set for Sunday, March 10th at 2 pm, at the Time and the Valleys Museum on St. Rt. 55 in Grahamsville, Sullivan County. [Read more…] about Heritage Gardening Program at Sullivan Co Museum
The Altona Flat Rock is a rare and spectacular site I’ve referenced here in the past, and was the subject of my first book written long ago (it was updated in 2005 with new glaciology information). Besides details on the unusual topography, glacial remnants, an incredibly persistent fire, and one of the world’s largest dams when it was built in the early 1900s, there was also a human history to tell. [Read more…] about Jefferson County’s Charles Sherman: Huckleberry Charlie
The Altona Flat Rock is a rare and spectacular site I’ve referenced here in the past, and was the subject of my first book written long ago (it was updated in 2005 with new glaciology information). Besides details on the unusual topography, glacial remnants, an incredibly persistent fire, and one of the world’s largest dams when it was built in the early 1900s, there was also a human history to tell. [Read more…] about Jefferson County’s Huckleberry Charlie
The Schenectady County Historical Society and the Electric City Food Co-op are teaming up to host an evening of local food tastings and live jazz (featuring Roben Kosek Jazz & Blues) inside Mabee Farm’s historic Dutch Barn.
Mabee Farm to Fork will be held on Saturday, September 24, from 5 – 8 pm. Tickets are $25 per person and will include local food tastings prepared by chef Christopher Marney. A cash bar will be available for alcoholic drinks. [Read more…] about Mabee Farm to Fork Celebrates Agricultural Traditions
In the northeast corner of New York State, the first weekend in June features Museum Days, during which 16 facilities in Clinton County offer free admission. We were among many who appeared as special guests on both days, offering our books for sale and visiting with attendees, which meant talking a lot about “the good old days.” From that experience, I can assure everyone that a trip to the Babbie Rural & Farm Learning Museum in Peru, where we spent Saturday, is a great idea from several perspectives.
As a museum, it’s a real pleasure, and for children and adults alike, it’s fun and entertaining. But it occurred to me that it’s also a priceless gift to people in their sixties or older, and to the offspring of those folks who have heard stories about childhood chores, tools of yesteryear, and appliances that preceded modern devices. [Read more…] about The Babbie Rural and Farm Learning Museum
Life 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. [Read more…] about New Book Explores Life On A Putnam County Farm
It’s a little known fact that the cheese industry in America owes a lot to New York State. Milton Stewart has set out to set the record straight with Say Cheese! The Story of the Era When New York State Cheese Was King, the story of the era when the premier cheesemaking region of the United States was in Central New York, chiefly in the Mohawk Valley.
In 1851, Jesse William set up what is considered the first cheese factory in America in Oneida County. It was also in New York that Professor Xerxes A. Willard became the nation’s most respected spokesman for the “associated dairies” concept in his drive to create higher standards in cheese making. [Read more…] about Say Cheese: When New York Cheese Was King
Use your bank’s “bill pay” option (or just send a check)
Thanks for your support! These are difficult times. Without your support we cannot publish the Almanack.
*Donations are not tax deductible.
(Click the X in the top right corner this box to not see this message again for 7 days).