rain delay in the blog

Rain, rain, rain... and no blog. Wet dogs. Leaks. Dirty dogs. Ruined water buckets. Flooding creeks. Roads closed. Driveway under water. No ark. Rain.

hudson valley affordable weekend rental

Look at the apartment I have here.

what to do in Columbia County, Chatham-centric ideas

Chatham New York: 10 miles from Glencadia.  Chatham wiki. Here is the village website.

If you go a ski resort, it's pretty obvious what the recreational activity is supposed to be. If you go to a beach location, same. Up here it's less obvious what you are supposed to do to. You can do many different things: cultural (see a performance), natural (hike or swim), agricultural (visit farms, buy local products), work out (canoe, bike, run), or aesthetic (see villages, country roads, mountains, rivers).

[Of course we have beaches on the Hudson and at the lake and you can ski only 20 minutes away at Catamount or about 35 minutes to Jimminy Peak.]

So here are some of the things I (we, family) like to do and some of it may interest visitors. If so, great. If not, write a comment. If you have another suggestion, I would love more links and comments. So here is my Chatham-centric guide to Columbia County for visitors.

If you want to bike, you might check this site out. We can try to accommodate guests with our bikes. BREAKING: I just wrote up how to get to a few nice spots by bike from CHATHAM not from my house. Here.

If you want to canoe, same story. I would suggest the Hudson or the Kinderhook creek and I have a couple of ideas.

Want to fish? Try this. Hunt? Then you know already. This is a great organization with events and guided hikes.

Local News. Buy a house. Or get yourself a farm!

Oh, and I've been going to the Crellin town park more often and it's very close to the house and you can play and swim there. It's a big nice park. Oh, and the Morris Memorial facilities are open to the public from 2 pm on (pool table, inside basketball, playroom, computers, wifi). It's across the street from the house.

LISTING SITE: Things going on in the area.

ANOTHER SET OF LINKS: Hudson (nearby town). Check out the links!
DRINK: Right around the corner there is our local and terrific microbrew. Bring your bottles back for a refill. And you have to try our local Vodka. Dynamite. Or wine. Lot of alcohol up here. The pub in Chatham has it's charm: Peint o Gwrw Tafarn.
NEARBY STUFF (walk out the door): Babysitting, indoor play area.
Free play group provided by the county.
The county fair.
Locally grown food This place just started up.
Two great bakeries: one for bread and one for sweets.

Blue Plate Restaurant
Ralphs Pretty Good Cafe
The community center across the street -- There is a gym and a community center with basketball across the street. There are regular play groups in there for young kids and sports and other stuff.

October Film Festival

I like the library, about two blocks away.

FARM OUTINGS:

These are farms that are set up to accommodate visitors, with business hours and all that.

Pick your own berries. Or closer to Chatham here. Finch during strawberries (late June early July) or blueberries (July) is a terrific outing.

Hawthorne Valley Farm
Biodynamic, associated with Waldorf school. You can see the pigs, the cows, lots of great festivals. Here is the school. They do great festivals and so on but the site doesn't seem to have one page with all of them. You get the complete list if you join the email newsletter. This is us at the Farm Festival.

You can go the farm store, buy local meat, raw milk, cheese, visit the pigs and cows, then cross the street to the creek behind the school and splash and make damns, then walk in the woods to the pond. There are also many beautiful country roads to bike or walk on. There is a gift shop, book store. This is a great outing for a morning or afternoon.

Shaker Museum and right next door is the sheep farm. The sheep farm is quite an operation. If you can also get into the museum, then you have yourself a full activity. We have other Shaker stuff here: Hancock Shaker Village in MA and New Lebanon. And Hancock Shaker Village has animals too. New Lebanon is quite fascinating. Here is us at the sheep farm.

Pick apples at minimally treated ochard (close as you'll get to organic on the east coast): Philips, Claverack, Philip Orchards PO Box 370. Claverack NY, 12513. Phone (518) 851-6351. Other orchards have more crops (cherries, peaches) but may use more chemicals: Love Apple on 9H in Stockport.

Other great farms that are not set up to know what to do if you drop by: Threshold Farm Philmont (can't be more beautiful spot or more interesting people, although the farmers are also damn good looking!)... there are so many I'll take a break.

The berry farm is close. It's a store and a pick your own.

STATE PARKS: Beebe State Park

You can climb the fire tower. That's fun and not too strenuous.

Breaking: this is great if you want a short canoe ride (only way in is by boat). About 3 miles from my house and I just discovered it.

A real beach with lifeguards. Taghkanic State Park. There are two areas, one with grass, one with sand. Good to boat or swim: groomed experience.

Walk and splash along to great waterfall (crossing state line from NY to MA in the process) at Bish Bash State Park (MA) or Taconic State Park (NY). Woods, creek, paths.

Here is our latest trip to Bash Bish (not Bish Bash) or COPAKE FALLS. Search for Copake Falls in New York State.

OTHER NATURE/CONSERVATION AREAS:

Ooms pond: One of our favorites. Walk around the pond, then head back to Chatham. Here we are at Ooms.

Bird Sanctuary. Nice hikes right out of town.

Local park (pond, tennis)

Further from Chatham:

Go to Stuyvesant Landing (farmers market Friday afternoon) then walk on the Hudson, a path with little beaches or go to Nutten Hook then walk up a little hill to the ruins of an ice factory. There is a children's book called The Ice Horse about how they used to cut huge blocks of ice out of the Hudson (which you frequently cannot do anymore) and store them for ice boxes in the summer. You can read the book with your kids, them show them the spot where it happened. You can also go the only business in Stuyvesant Landing, the cafe.

You can also go to this trail on a boardwalk deep in the wetlands jungle of the Hudson river. Quite something. It's pretty cool.

Go to the Greenpoint Conservation Area for great Hudson River views then go into the town of Hudson for lunch and antiques and shops. That's a good 1/2 day outing.

SWIM IN A POOL: Winding Brook Country Club

SWIM IN THE CREEK: There are swimming holes along the Kinderhook Creek that are pretty unofficial. At the end of Kinderhook, right at 9h and 203 there is a more or less official spot and in Stuyvesant Falls we have the town park/waterfall, north of Chatham there is a great one off of route 66. Harder to find. These are great, though, especially the hard to find one. Read here about how to find it.

PERFORMANCE INSTITUTIONS:
Outdoor Performance Space close to Chatham Village. Spencertown Academy also close.

Theater company. Good.

Art Omi -- fascinating and close.

Olana: bizarre house and amazing views

Another Hudson River mansion open to the public that has the most beautiful gardens: Clermont.

FARMERS MARKETS:

Chatham 15 Church Street Friday 4-7 PM

Kinderhook Village Green (intersection of 9 and 203) Saturday 8 am-12 noon

Hudson Saturday Columbia Street and 6th Street Saturday 9 am -1 pm

PLACES I LIKE OUT OF CHATHAM:

Nice restaurant in Philmont (near Hawthorne Valley)

Le Gamin -- lovely people, aces

Mexican Radio -- terrific guy owns this

Great Pizza: THEY DELIVER? No.

Fancy but very, very, very good restaurant

kite and dogs

kite flying, making up dog names, being a dog from glencadia on Vimeo.

while the video uploads

Thanks to those who bought my crazy book...

Untitled from glencadia on Vimeo.

First failure:
http://www.vimeo.com/5746404

Cleo: was a bit nervous but is already waging his tail... didn't take too long
Django: fine
Captain Mellow: good
Sylar: with just a couple of mellower dogs, was nervous about me, not dogs, seems better already
Quincy: energy is great... doesn't seem 11 at all
Mingus: mingus is mingus
Matilda: Chloe, Matilda and Cali are a non-stop trio
Meena: ran around a lot
Mack: has a slight limp, seems fine
Helmut: can only handle the ramp: no stairs
Clover: excellent
Reese: everyone wants to hump Reese. He puts up with it.
Charlie: hates the horses
Tucker: quite a clown
Brutus and Lou Lou: having a fine time
Lucy: bigger
Cali: fine
Chloe: great
Sinbad: trucking along
Bond: greedy
Natto: little bossy
Remy Lulu: fine
Pixel: greedy
Lulu Stella: funny
Kenya: loud
Jackson: fine
Rupert: still doesn't love me: prefers women and children
Tattoo: excellent
Ringo Starr: mixing it up
Newman: an island of calm
Brady: ready to go
Colin: plays well with Mingus
Buster: jeeze buster, stop it with running out the door ...
Howzer: wow is he getting to be at home and comfortable here
Gracie: fine
Tina: fine
Frankie: fine

dog camp, the book

Three years and one thousand dogs later, it's here: the dog camp book, DOG STORIES: Watch Your Step. Telling dog stories for years--about the time the dog got stuck under the barn, about the dog that ate the gingerbread house, about the fireworks--I've heard over and over again that "you should write these down." Well, now I did.

What would it be like to live with 50 dogs? We sold our house in Park Slope Brooklyn and bought an ancient house with 15 acres and a massive barn in upstate New York. The barn became the home away from home for dogs from New York City, thousands of dogs (or maybe only a thousand) over many years. Culling through the stories I found myself telling over and over again, the funniest incidents, DOG STORIES is a collection of 15 humorous stories about dogs the situations you find yourself in if you take care of and transport hundreds of dogs over years and years, all the things they bite and eat, the places they go and the things their owners think about them.

Your dog, or one like your dog, might be in here, maybe pseudonymously, in image or story. One thousand dogs later I should be able to tell a couple of good stories. And here is the Glencadia Dog Camp guarantee: if you don't laugh once, out loud, while reading this book you are entitled to a full refund and a bone.

Get it here.

And here is the 30 second ad (more or less):

glencadia dog camp, the book from glencadia on Vimeo.

frustrating video shoot

This is last year about this time.

Mowgli running right into the camera was the least of it. My son started shouting about how I shouldn't let the dogs in the pond, that will scare the ducks, and the dogs ran to him and chaos ensued. I put the horses away then took another group out to the horse field and the battery on the camera died. At least the pig is behaving. And, for the record, Annie has been in many or most of the videos, gosh darn it. But she is in this one for sure. She's rolling in pig shit.

The pig ran away two days ago and Ollie and I had to chase him on the road back to the house. Filbert just hung around the yard for a few days, playing with the dogs. When the storm came, he went back to his pig house.

I tried to get the Boston Terriers to play on camera but they didn't... they do seem to like each other though. And our new arrivals are doing fine: Max, Betty and Charlie. Frankie, as big as he is, caught a mouse, believe it or not. He had it in the morning.

So I will recharge the video camera, tape up the tripod (thanks Mowgli), get some peas and beans from the garden for Wellington (we have tons) and try again, damn it.

So why not round out a frustrating video day with failure to upload first try. I upload these all the time in the same way. I even paid for space on the vimeo site. Okay, let's try again. Nope. Third time seems to work but I lowered the resolution.

third try from glencadia on Vimeo.

fed the pig (what an insult), fed the dogs, chickens, horses... anyone else?

July 11, 2009 at Glencadia Dog Camp from glencadia on Vimeo.

Not dog related: paintings and drawings.

straight up blog entry

Sorry for the delay updating this blog. I like to do it more often than this... plus I am updated and uploading, then going back out to make sure those that didn't get a chance to swim do, and might upload again and this is in progress and I think I got everyone in here and please feel free to leave a comment telling me I left your dog out and I will make sure to feature them more prominently next time and how long a run-on sentance can I write and we'll see and I'm done but still running-on and I think that's about enough.

This video doesn't seem to be uploading, damn it.

Wait: here it is!

third try uploading this video from glencadia on Vimeo.

Here is all the evidence I tried to get this to work before:

http://vimeo.com/5542126

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3045949/july_10_2009_at_glencadia_dog_camp/

http://www.vimeo.com/5539573

Rocky: joe cool
clover: happy visla
Romeo: cancelled
Lady Lulu: nervous! yet to settle in... but we are working hard on it.
Charlie: not loud for a beagle... friendly and happy
Theo: also a bit nervous this morning, not much, and is already better this afternoon
Mingus: mingus is mingus
Max: doing fine, not barking so much
Iko: little skittery but very affectionate
Lou Lou and Brutus: like big dogs
Bailey: more relaxed these days
Shibby: swimming
fenway: does not always bark, only when the video camera is on
Sinbad: legs are better and LOVES the massage
Spencer: comes when called offleash
Bond: seems happy to be back
Suzie: a lot of dog
Lulu and Remy: doing great is Iko also the same breed? Iko and Lulu are similar.
JB: friendly puppy, likes the little ones
Pixel: has not gained weight
Stella and Lulu: great with the puppy.
Molly: my wife says these were most common dogs when she was going up in Germany and is glad to have her around
Kenya: still stealing
Jackson: action jackson
Bruno: having a fine old time
Cleo: fine, now that the loud noises stopped
Ringo Starr: happy to play in the small dog room
Annie: doing great... OWE YOU MORE VIDEO!
Daisy: did you see what she is like now? can you believe it?
Moki: hates getting a hair cut and wrecks buckets -- no one's perfect
Lady: matured, but still a lot of dog

cat befriender, rooster respecter, chicken chaser, hole maker, dog humper, harmonica hearer, and a toast to the stars and planet

cat befriender, rooster respecter, chicken chaser, hole maker, dog humper, harmonica hearer, and a toast to the stars and planet from glencadia on Vimeo.

bucket wrecker, wall jumper, ball popper, chicken chucker, cat cornerer, pig pesterer, horse harasser

the chicken chaser, the horse harasser, the pig sniffer, the list maker, the bucket checker from glencadia on Vimeo.

or

this is the fourth time I've tried to upload this video from glencadia on Vimeo.