Country Wisdom News

Major facelift completed in time for new season of shows

by Tod Westlake

If you haven’t been to Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville for a while, you might not recognize it. In the past few years the theater has taken on a major capital project that has turned its faded façade and interior into a theater venue that would be the envy of any community. And with the theater’s new season in full swing, you couldn’t pick a better time to reacquaint yourself with the place.

“A little over two years ago we set out to raise one-million dollars for, essentially, what has become a four-phase project,” says Shadowland’s artistic director Brendan Burke. “The first one was to build actor housing. We achieved that a couple of years back.”

Shadowland then turned toward fixing up the theater itself, which Burke says was broken down into two main phases.

“First, we did the front half of the building, so a new façade, a new roof, the marquee, offices, and the lobby. We finished that up last summer. We also added 22 seats in the theater.”

This past winter, the group took on the renovation of the rest of the building, which consisted of the main auditorium, the main roof of the building, the walls other than the front wall, and the backstage area, which includes green rooms and dressing rooms.

“We also rebuilt the entire stage,” says Burke. “And we revamped the sound system and the lighting.” Burke says that, at first, this endeavor didn’t have the large scope into which it eventually grew, but once the theater got started on the first project, it seemed like a good idea to just keep going.

“Originally I don’t think our plans were to do that much to this building,” Burke says. “But we did. We did it all. And we completed the project on the Tuesday before we opened for the season.”

Folks will also be interested to know that, from now on, the theater will be able to operate in the winter months, as it now has a state-of-the-art HVAC system. In prior years, the building would be temporarily mothballed.

“We’ll be thinking about what kind of programming we want to fit in there [during the winter] that will suit our mission,” Burke says. “A good part of it will be family oriented with our kids’ shows, and the kids’ classes and their performances. But it also offers us the opportunity to do some one-night stands with musical acts and things like that.”

The theater also recently acquired the storefront situated on the corner across from Cohen’s Bakery on Market Street that will eventually be turned into a 99-seat ancillary theater.

“It’s currently serving as our rehearsal space and our classroom space,” Burke says.

The board of directors for the theater, according to Burke, had formulated a 15-year plan as to where it wanted the theater to go over the next decade-plus, and that one of the constant conundrums it faced was a lack of rehearsal space when the stage is in use.

“If we have a show onstage, where do we have the kids’ classes?” Burke says. “So we looked around at the various places in the village, and this seemed like a really dynamic spot.”

With big picture-windows, the rehearsal space will have the effect of inviting the public to check out what is going on in the interior. Burke says that he especially wanted to thank Hal Brill for donating it to the theater.

“Hal Brill is a big supporter of the theater, and he was interested in having the space used, so he donated it to us,” Burke says. “We now have all the plans [for the second theater] sketched out, but we won’t be able to start that construction until we pay off the construction of the main building.”

As for this season of performances, Burke says that it’s off to a terrific start. The season’s opening play, "The Outgoing Tide," recently finished up its run, with terrific reviews. Next up is "Love/Sick," a romantic comedy written and directed by Tony Award-nominated auteur John Cariani, whose earlier play, "Almost Maine," has become one of the most-performed plays in the country. Then, beginning on July 12, Burke himself will direct the farce "Boeing, Boeing." For details on performances at Shadowland, call 845-647-5511 or visit shadowlandtheatre.org. Either way, be sure to stop by and check out Shadowland’s transformation the next time you’re in Ellenville.

“Aesthetically, the space is really remarkable when you walk in right now,” Burke says. “It’s a big transition that respects the Art Deco history of the theater, but also moves the Art Deco forward with a more industrial feel. It’s really a beautiful space.”

Stone ground ancient grains are packed with nutrients

by Anne Pyburn Craig

Wheat has been grown and domesticated ever since our species has been growing and domesticating. It’s such an ancient and ubiquitous staple that it’s mentioned 39 times in the Old Testament of the Bible. And in the early 20th century, wheat was still being grown and milled in the Northeast.

“There used to be mills all around the Hudson Valley region,” says Community Grain Project founder Don Lewis of Dutchess County. “But that part of the food system collapsed long ago, before big growers started modifying wheat strains for higher yield and longer shelf life. This is an extreme climate for cereal grains, and when the Erie Canal opened, farmers began moving to the Ohio Valley, where there was better soil. Mills went with them, and the ones around here were abandoned.” Later in the 20th century, selective breeding by farmers produced wheat designed to maximize profit.

When Lewis began working with wheat over a dozen years ago at Wild Hive Farms in Clinton Corners, he very nearly had to reinvent the process. “There were no resources and there was no one to teach me; I made a lot of poor flour in the beginning,” he recalls. “And there was no consumer base. Local grain was basically a lost part of the food system.”

The wheat produced by agribusiness doesn’t just lack food value—an issue the industry attempts to remedy by “enriching” flours, breads and pasta with chemical vitamins—it can actually do harm. The 2011 book Wheat Belly by cardiologist William Davis implicates wheat gluten in a host of ills: obesity, arthritis, asthma, and even mental and emotional issues.

But while Davis advocates complete “wheatlessness”, even he admits that modern wheat is the biggest offender. “It’s the product of 40 years of genetics research aimed at increasing yield-per-acre,” he notes on the Wheat Belly website. “The genetic distance modern wheat has drifted exceeds the difference between chimpanzees and humans.”

The 1% of people who suffer from celiac disease must indeed avoid anything wheat-related. But many others who experience lesser ill effects from eating standard wheat may find that the kind of strains Lewis is working with—ancient cultivars such as spelt, emmer, barley and rye, stone ground to retain the germ and bran—produce products they are able to enjoy without ill effects. “I have customers who are gluten-intolerant who can eat my products,” Lewis says. “Especially fresh. All protein gets rancid as it gets old—fresh-milled flour causes many people fewer issues.”

The milling process is an extremely important part of creating healthy grain products. “Mechanized roller mills are much faster than milling with stones,” says Lewis, who nevertheless manages to mill 120 tons of grain a year these days. “But when you roller mill you completely lose both the germ and the bran, which contain the amino acids and minerals. Supermarket bread that’s advertised as ‘stone ground’ comes from running flour that has already been roller milled through stone mills—you still end up with something with no nutrient density and no flavor.”

In restoring density and flavor to the local diet, Lewis found an ally in Eli Rogosa, the woman behind the Heritage Grain Conservancy (growseed.org). For the past two decades, Rogosa has been journeying to the Middle East and Europe, gathering up ancient strains to protect them from extinction. “I maintain hundreds and hundreds of samples from all over the world, and the ones I sell are chosen as the healthiest grains and most likely to thrive,” she says. “I started doing this first because I am originally from the Fertile Crescent and I got fascinated. I am as much an anthropologist of wheat as anything, although I also have a bakery.” The varieties Rogosa collects are the landrace cultivars—strains that have evolved to suit various growing conditions spontaneously, rather than being selectively bred by humans to suit our purposes.

Rogosa’s work is supported by the European Union, Israel, and the USDA; collaborating with the University of Massachusetts Research Farm, she’s been able to experiment with a range of heritage grains. “Modern wheat contributes to the increase in gluten sensitivity. Einkorn is actually not genetically related to [modern] wheat; it doesn’t cause gluten allergic reactions. It’s safe, ancient gluten. I have a problem eating gluten, but I can eat ancient wheat just fine.”

“Since I began, there has been an enormous increase in interest,” Rogosa observes with satisfaction. Lewis agrees: “Demand is tremendous—the main thing is to get growers to start growing again, and there are hundreds of acres potentially being added this year,” he says. “Consumer awareness is at a completely different level than it was fifteen years ago. I started the Wild Hive Bakery knowing that I had to get this wheat into people’s stomachs. I closed it because my energy needs to be going into the Community Grain Project. It’s really coming to fruition, but it needs to keep getting bigger and wider, with more outlets.”

Interest is spreading: on the website of the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s New York website are announcements of upcoming workshops entitled “Producing Heirloom Wheat for the Personal Homestead” and “Diversifying Your Farm with Value-Added Grains.” Rogosa says that growers in Vermont and Massachusetts and at Cornell University have begun working with heritage wheat. But it’s not quite as simple as growing your own tomatoes: the hand-harvesting process involves stages like threshing that are labor-intensive and no longer a part of common knowledge, and then there’s the necessity of having a nearby mill that will grind your crop into flour.

Thanks to Lewis and his Community Grain Project, the growers of the Hudson Valley have the milling piece of the puzzle in place. And food-aware chefs and consumers have taken notice. Celebrity chef Mario Batali uses Wild Hive products extensively at his Eataly NYC artisanal Italian food and wine marketplace, and at Bread Alone in Boiceville, Sharon Burns-Leader uses Wild Hive flour to create a spelt bread described as “sweet, earthy and good for customers with digestive issues.” Hudson Valley outlets for Wild Hive’s flours include Mother Earth’s Storehouse in Saugerties; Woodstock Meats and Sunfrost Farms in Woodstock; Adams Fairacre Farms in Lake Katrine and Poughkeepsie; New Paltz Health and Nutrition Center and Taliaferro Farms in New Paltz; Red Hook Natural Foods; Rhinebeck Health Foods; the Beacon Natural Market; and Nature’s Pantry in Fishkill.

It bears repeating: Celiac sufferers must avoid all gluten. But for people who experience milder gluten reactions, ancient grains may offer a way to enjoy and obtain the health benefits of baked goods without unpleasant effects. Researchers, including Rogosa, are investigating the effects of ancient grains on those who suffer from non-celiac gluten allergies and sensitivities.

For the rest of us, the growing availability of heritage grains is great news; the difference in nutrient density is undeniable. But most of all, there’s the taste—a sensory experience that neither mass-produced breads nor gluten-free substitutes can equal. “You can almost smell and taste the field,” says Lewis of breaking open a fresh loaf of for-real stone ground. “The future of bread is awesome.”

Tool to strengthen and coordinate Hudson Valley agriculture

by Philip Ehrensaft

American consumers are increasingly inclined to buy food from local, identifiable sources, produced with environmentally sustainable practices, and preferably from family farms as opposed to large-scale agribusiness. There are many farmers who would be all too glad to oblige them.

But there's a frequent disconnect that prevents those mutual desires from being realized. That disconnect is the lack of an agricultural transportation, warehousing, processing and distribution infrastructure that can cost-effectively move local, source-identified farm products to the buyers who want them. Our food system is predominantly organized by large-scale agribusinesses that run a fine-honed network for collecting, processing and distributing farm products to supermarket chains, large institutional purchasers like cafeterias in public institutions, or major private companies.

In effect, farmers can build the baseball fields, and many consumers want to sit in the stands, but the infrastructure for getting the two parties together is weak. One rapidly growing organizational tool for merging the two parties is a “food hub,” a combination farm marketing, farm family support, and often community-building tool that is being actively analyzed and encouraged by the United States Department of Agriculture.

The Hudson Valley Food Hubs Initiative, a policy research project sponsored by the New World Foundation's Local Economies Project, is one of the most ambitious and thorough investigations to date of this new way of linking farmers and consumers. The lead researcher, Sarah Brannen, from Upstream Advisers in Poughkeepsie, has produced a must-read analysis not only for Hudson Valley citizens focusing on agriculture, and economic development in general, but for a national audience as well. localeconomies-hv.org/food-system/food-hub

That's by virtue of Brannen's combing the experiences of food hubs nationally, choosing 12 for looking at best practices, and seeing how these lessons might or might not apply in Hudson Valley circumstances. The Hudson Valley is a region with one of the highest potentials for food hubs to link local producers and consumers, and thus bears national attention.

The Valley still has plenty of good agricultural land that hasn't been paved over; much of the land is suitable for high value per acre, sustainably produced fruits and vegetables, or craft dairy and meat production; the Valley is one of the only regions of New York with substantial population growth, and a relatively high proportion of its consumers are inclined to buy local, source-identified food; it is next door to the country's largest single food market, where there's also high enthusiasm for sustainably produced local food, not to mention copious vitamin pills and herbal supplements to counter the lousy air and sheer stress of the place.

So precisely what is this “food hub” beast? And how effective can it be in building up effective transportation, storage, processing and marketing links between local farmers who want to produce source-identified food rather than anonymous commodities shipped into the agribusiness system, and regional consumers who would like to buy what farmers want to produce?

A new national USDA research report—The Role of Food Hubs in Local Food Marketing by James Matson, Martha Sullins and Chris Cook—first cites a working definition of a farm hub: “a business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, distribution and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail and institutional demand.”

Then Matson, Sullins and Cook immediately nuance the definition on two counts: 1) Community-building and environmentalism. Many hubs evolved from educational or social missions to bring consumers and producers together. Besides selling local foods, they educate buyers about the importance of retaining food dollars in the local economy, and conserving farmland; 2) Virtual organizations. In this Internet era, very functional hubs exist that do not consist of brick and mortar facilities; rather, they “live” primarily in a virtual context and are thus able to transmit information quickly among local buyers and sellers.

So food hubs assume diverse organizational forms in pursuing a core mandate of linking local producers and consumers, ranging from private for-profit companies delivering to wholesalers and large institutions, and on to community nonprofits facilitating direct contact, both economic and social between farmers and local consumers, and a strong emphasis on helping small and medium-sized family farms survive and thrive in a food system tilted towards big farms.

Among the 168 food hubs that were studied by the USDA researchers, there were 67 private companies, 54 nonprofit organizations, 36 cooperatives, 8 publicly held companies, and 3 informal arrangement. Criss-crossing these ownership forms, there was also diverse targeting of clientele: 70 focused on farm sales to businesses or institutions; 60 focused on sales to consumers; and 38 did both.

Foods hubs are an experiment in progress. Sixty percent of hubs inventoried by the USDA have existed for less than five years, another nine percent for six to ten years, and only nine percent for 29 years or more.

Brannen's mandate was to take a systematic look at how each of these diverse approaches to organizing food hubs might or might not work well to advance farming in the Hudson Valley. The report pulls together a very large body of information on the 3,100 farms working 474,00 acres, and generating $322 million gross farm sales in the nine counties along the Hudson River from Westchester and Rockland through Columbia, Greene, and Sullivan counties—in addition to the New York City food market's potential for Hudson Valley farming. Brannen also interviewed 117 farmers and food business people; organized seven food hub listening sessions involving 200+ people, and assembled an impressive expert advisory board to give her advice and feedback as she proceeded. One also has the distinct impression that she read every study, major and minor, of the food hub experience in the US.

One surprise in the Hudson Valley Food Hubs Initiativereport, a well-founded surprise, is its conclusion that projects for creating a big, central regional food hub for the Valley would not be an optimal move. Given the diverse nature of farming here, sales and distribution networks are equally diverse. One size does not fit all, as it might, for example, if Illinois and Iowa organic corn and soybean farmers wanted to band together to reach adjacent urban markets. In the Hudson Valley, farmers and merchants in the fruit, vegetable, dairy, meat and poultry sub-sectors are already performing some typical farm hub functions appropriate for their quite different respective sectors. This ranges from direct farm sales and farmers' markets to Community Supported Agriculture, and on to farmer co-ops and farmers using their own trucks for delivery to local retailers.

With respect to existing food-hub-equivalent arrangements for reaching individual consumers and small retailers, Brannen advocates solidifying and extending what has already started.

In contrast, a new effort is needed for building organizations that overcome predominantly weak links between the Valley's farmers and the large-scale purchasers who are the big sluggers in our current food system. That includes big supermarkets and food wholesalers, food services in the Valley's large private firms, and big public institutions like hospitals or schools. This will require building new capacities, like on-farm quality controlled packing of produce, and especially recruiting management and sales people who know how deal with the big purchasers. Given increasing consumer preferences for local source-identified food, and the desire of the big purchasers to make money delivering what consumers want, that can be done.

Above all, Hudson Valley citizens' organizations must make it very clear to their governments, nonprofits, and large private firms that they want firm commitments to buy local, source-identified food.

Vassar's Powerhouse Festival kicks off its 29th edition

by Philip Ehrensaft

Chloe Sevigny in Abigail/1702. © Vassar & NYSF / Buck Lewis.

Industrial incubators are key organizations for local economic development. They offer low-cost space, communications facilities, and expert advice to young enterprises that will hopefully grow up into pillars of the regional economy. The Powerhouse Theater Festival, a partnership between the nonprofit organization New York Stage and Film and Vassar College, is a parallel incubator for the Big Apple's theater scene. Its mission is to provide a setting and resources where playwrights, directors, actors and staging specialists can develop new works, free from the usual commercial and daily living pressures. The development stages range from first readings of scripts in progress, all the way through fully staged productions of dramas and musicals.

Powerhouse began as a modest festival in 1985, presenting three staged plays and three script readings. The name of the festival comes from the conversion of Vassar's old electric generation plant into one fine theater. Now Powerhouse involves 200+ New York City theater professionals, plus 49 students following an intensive apprenticeship program. They live and work at Vassar College during June and July, and kick off a performance calendar running from June 21through July 28.

As one actress put it during a post-play discussion between audience members and performers, interchanges are one of the most attractive parts of the Powerhouse experience: Vassar College and New York Stage and Film have created a wonderful summer camp for the New York City theater world—a camp where actors can actively collaborate with writers and directors in shaping new works, as opposed to receiving a finished script and learning one's part. For authors, this brings us nicely back to Shakespeare's time, when such mutuality was the norm.

Powerhouse is spearheaded by two people: the producing director, Vassar's Ed Cheetham, and New York Stage and Film's artistic director, Johanna Pfaelzer. Cheetham is a local boy from Wappingers Falls who went on to study theater at Niagara University. He considers himself very fortunate, given the precarious theater employment market, to have landed this plum but very demanding job—and back home in the Hudson Valley to boot. It took long, hard work to get there: after graduating with a drama degree from Niagara University in 1987, Cheetham was hired as an assistant to Powerhouse's producing director in 1988, returned in 1991 as an apprentice director, then returned in various roles every summer from 1999 onward, and was named producing director in 2006.

Cheetham actually has two demanding jobs in the Powerhouse Festival. First, as producing director, he has to make the whole ball of wax work: the physical and administrative infrastructure, and the logistics of everything from housing artists to opening nights. If the theater world is anything like the opera world that I know, that can often be the equivalent of trying to herd cats.

Second, Cheetham also directs Powerhouse's intensive internship training program. Performances of three different plays are the public face of this program. This year, the 49 carefully selected interns will perform an ancient classic, Agamemnon by Aeschylus; Shakespeare's As You Like It; and a modern classic, Frederico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding. Behind the scenes, the interns are getting classes in all the dimensions of the theater world: writing, directing, stage design, the theater business and on. If they want to spend their life in theater, they see the full range of possibilities. The most important part of their training, however, is likely informal occasions like BBQ dinners where they can interact with the top professional writers, directors or actors taking part in the festival.

To my eyes and ears, intern performances were highlight events in the 2012 Powerhouse Festival, and that's saying a great deal, given the high caliber of the professional productions. These talented, hard-working student artists, directed by professionals who love to teach, bring exceptional energy to the stage. The internship performances are free to the public, all the more incentive to take them in.

Powerhouse interns are also trained in Soundpainting, Woodstock-based composer Walter Thompson's invention of a gestural vocabulary for directing on-the-spot composition of music, intertwined with visual arts, dancing and literature. Late Thursday evening Soundpainting performances start on July 4 at Vassar's Lehman-Loeb Art Center. We'll get a chance to see why this Hudson Valley invention sparked an international Soundpainting movement.

As Powerhouse's artistic director, Johanna Pfaelzer must read through a plethora of scripts and proposals before making hard choices about what gets on the festival calendar. That calendar includes two Mainstageproductions that are in the final stages of development, and ready after the 2013 Festival performances to shop themselves as candidates for runs on Broadway, or Broadway's Off and Off-Off variants.

Downtown Race Riot by two Broadway veterans, writer Seth Zvi Rosenfeld and director Scott Elliot, looks at the hard choices that an 18-year-old must make in the face of a Washington Square race riot compounded by tribal loyalties and petty beefs. When the Lights Went Out centers around six interwoven stories about experiences during the Northeast electric blackout of 2003. This is a debut for the Iraqi-American playwright Mozhan Marno; One of the six stories focuses on an Iraqi immigrant making her way across the Brooklyn Bridge, chasing memories of her lost son and homeland.

Bright Star, the first of two fully staged musicals for 2013, features bluegrass-tinged music co-composed by star actor Steve Martin, who also wrote the book. You best buy tickets early on for this musical set in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A Musical Inspired by the Brooklyn Hero Supply Company is based on characters created by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. A superhero's daughter does not want the cape passed on, and is ready and willing to exchange roles with an idealistic young Brooklynite who longs for super-herodom. Who else but Chabon would dream up something like that?

The Inside Looks series features two semi-staged workshops. Found is a musical loosely inspired by the life of Found magazine editor Davy Rothbart, who must choose between his cherished, wild road life of discovery, and settling down with the love of his life, a school teacher. Mother of Invention unfolds as an aging Dottie Rupp is moved into assisted living by her children. Mom's memory is failing, a mysterious stranger shows up, and the offspring start wondering whether the mom they thought they knew might have a very different history.

Powerhouse 2013 begins and ends with a weekend of readings of plays in first drafts. The Readings Festival has no admission charge, but the venue is small, so it's best to reserve a place in advance. This intimacy offers maximum opportunities to interact with authors, learn different approaches to making drama work, and offer feedback that improves their work.

If you are looking for a good at-home vacation in Stubborn Recession times, devoting your free time to the nationally prominent Powerhouse Theater Festival is a fine option. The same goes for anyone who loves theater or wants to discover theater. We have a national resource in our own backyard.

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra and its well-rounded education.

by Philip Ehrensaft

Of all the Bard College success stories, the rapid rise of the Bard Conservatory to national and international prominence is likely the college's biggest bang in the shortest time. In 2003, the Bard Conservatory was a promising idea for a new approach to professional music education proposed by Robert Martin, who was simultaneously an eminent cellist, a philosophy professor with a PhD from Yale, a vice-president of Bard College, and the president of Chamber Music America. Martin was inspired by the newly opened Fisher Center for the Performing Arts—providing the class act venue that is a necessary component of a class act conservatory.

Martin advanced two core ideas for creating a new Bard Music Conservatory: first, breaking with standard conservatory education, where accomplished young musicians are chosen directly from high school on the basis of highly competitive auditions, as well as the usual grades and recommendations. Conservatories then give them rigorous musical training, but little else. That's viewed as optimal for upping performance levels by youngsters who have already demonstrated their exceptional talents and willingness to work very, very hard. Stick close to your knitting.

On the basis of his own trajectory, Martin respectfully disagrees. He passed the admission gauntlet for an elite conservatory, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, but also wanted to do a liberal arts degree at an equally elite liberal arts college, Haverford. Curtis discouraged the young Martin from such a perceived distraction, but he persisted and emerged five years later with two sheepskins in hand. Martin continued the same dual path, simultaneously doing things like playing cello in the highly reputed Sequoia String Quartet and earning tenure as philosophy professor.

Above all, Martin sees this dual path as the opposite of distraction for development as a musician. His liberal arts and then doctoral philosophy training upped his curiosity, reasoning capacity, and ability to see connections between things. That, in turn, advanced his understanding of the structure and meaning of the scores on his music stand, and how to communicate that understanding to audiences. He wanted to create a conservatory where every student would reap the fruits of multidisciplinary synergy.

That idea got a ready green light from Bard College's president and fellow polymath, Leon Botstein. After dual training as an historian and conductor, Botstein became the president of Bard College in 1975, at the ripe old age of 29. Botstein and Martin co-directed the rise of the Bard Music Festival, from a promising event at an exurban college into a major event in Greater New York's crowded, competitive music season. A working partnership was ready to go. Martin recruited yet another Bard polymath as the vice-director of the proposed conservatory, Melvin Chen—a classical pianist who also earned a Harvard PhD in chemistry.

The second pillar of the proposed new conservatory was pragmatic: it would be very expensive to hire high-level musicians as full-time faculty. Being located in the exurban fringe of the country's principal music market, New York City, presented an evident alternative: dip into NYC's deep pool of elite musicians, who would commute to Bard to give lessons. The Bard Conservatory's faculty is a who's who sampling of top Big Apple talent. To name but a few: Dawn Upshaw in vocal music; Shmuel Ashkenasi, Eugene Drucker and Arnold Steinhardt for violin; and Jeremy Denk, Richard Goode, and Peter Serkin for piano.

In the fall of 2004, the Bard Conservatory was still an embryonic proposal. Within just one year, the Conservatory opened the doors for its first cohort of 20 students in September 2005. In contrast to my alma mater, Oberlin, Bard Conservatory students are required to do a second, non-music degree. Martin learned that, while a majority of students admitted to Oberlin's conservatory expressed an interest in doing dual degrees, only 15 percent actually did so. The goal was to recruit students willing to take on the substantially extra time and work that had enriched Martin, Botstein and Chen, both as musicians and as informed citizens.

Now there are 90 carefully selected students, half from across the US and half from abroad. That's enough musicians to form the Bard Conservatory's full symphony orchestra, a young ensemble that quickly became good enough, guided by Botstein's baton, to dare a Lincoln Center debut in 2010. This May 22, the BCO returns to Lincoln Center for a concert presaging August's 24th edition of the Bard Music Festival, Stravinsky and His World.

Hudson Valley residents don't have to trek to Manhattan to hear what the BCO will perform at Lincoln Center. On May 11, they'll perform the same repertoire in the Fisher Center's acoustical gem, the Sosnoff Theater, starting with Stravinsky's seminal early piece, Feu d'Artifice (Fireworks), Op. 4. Fireworks showed such promise that the ballet impressario Sergei Diaghalev hired the young Stravinsky, still a student, to compose The Firebird. Then there's Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, featuring one of Bard's prize faculty catches, Shmuel Ashkenasi, as the soloist. The concert wraps up with Shostakovich's bold Symphony No. 10.

May also brings 11 recitals by graduating Bard Conservatory students, and an opportunity to hear why they are getting admitted to graduate programs in America's big name conservatories. There will also be a four-part Chamber Music Marathon running on the weekend of May 3-5. The details can be found at the Conservatory's website, bard.edu/conservatory/events. You can also take the opportunity to see the brand new Bard Conservatory Building, made possible by a beyond-generous $9.2 million gift from Bard alumnus Lazlo Z. Bito.

by Maria Reidelbach

Last month in my column about bees, Chris Harp, local apiarist, explained that the blossoms of fruit

Mulberries.

trees are one of the richest sources of food for bees. Just after I wrote the piece, there was more bad news about the colony collapse disease that threatens the entire honeybee species. What a great time to think about adding more blossoming fruit trees to a garden both for our six-legged allies and for our own delight!

If foraging wild food is like a pick-up, and growing annual vegetables is like a summer fling, planting a fruit or nut tree is like getting married. Both marriage and tree take time to get established, but if healthy, both endure for a very, very long time. “You plant a pear for your heir,” is the old saying that John Wightman repeated to me. John is the extremely knowledgeable farmer of Wightman Fruit Farm and an NRCCA Certified Northeastern Crop Advisor. He sobered me about the impact of, and the amount of care needed by, the unimposing twig with roots that you place in your garden. If all goes well that twig will become a towering presence, so you want to take your time and choose very, very carefully. If you choose well, John adds, well-placed and -tended fruit and nut trees can add a lot of value to a garden both visually and productively. He points out succinctly, “Trees are fantastic at turning solar energy into stuff that tastes good.”

Siting a tree in an optimal location is crucial. The main conditions that affect a tree's success are: the amount of space for mature size, amount of sunlight, the condition and composition of the soil, water drainage, exposure, wind direction and soil contamination. Many species need to be planted in pairs in order to fruit abundantly (kinda romantic, I think), so you've either got to have room for two, or get your neighbor to plant one. The permaculture method takes the art of siting to a new level. Ethan Roland is the principal of Appleseed Permaculture in Accord and for the last seven years has been planning balanced ecosystems that contain a wide variety of food-bearing plants, from annual vegetables to berries to fungus to trees. Ideally, all live in a symbiotic community that makes the best of a site's conditions and that maximizes self-maintenance and sustainability.

The variety of tree you choose will have a huge impact on your success. Counterintuitively, the most obvious choices are not the best! Our Hudson Valley climate spans the USDA hardiness zones from 5 to 7. This rules out citrus fruits and tropical fruits, obviously, but also makes some borderline species much more challenging. Peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums will grow here, but you court failure at many turns. Successful growers take these limitations seriously and instead choose species and varieties that thrive here.

Elizabeth Ryan is a local ag powerhouse, one of the founders of the New York City greenmarket and farmer of four orchards in Dutchess and Ulster counties. For home growers she recommends pears; the trees don't freeze and although they grow slowly, they will live 100 years (plant a pear for your heir!). Elizabeth also suggests the sweet cherry varieties Schmidts Biggarreau and Hedelfingen, and sour cherries, which I think are the most insanely delicious fruit ever.

Lee Reich is a New Paltzian who has written a bunch of books about all aspects of edible landscaping. He's got a master’s degree in soil science, and a doctorate in horticulture. Lee grows a stunning variety of fruits and vegetables on his “farmden” (farm and garden). He recommends native varieties because they evolved especially for our environment. These include the pawpaw (get a named variety), the persimmon (Szukis is good), pear (dwarf trees do well), sour cherry trees (Cornelian), and chestnuts (peach chestnut). Wightman recommends dwarf varieties for small gardens.

Cultivated fruit and nut trees need more care than ornamental or native trees because it's heavy-lifting to grow fruit every year (literally): they need species-specific feeding and pruning, they are vulnerable to pests and diseases (who also like to eat fresh fruit), and some more particular than others. Apples, as it turns out, are incredibly difficult to grow, and require specialized pruning and multiple pesticide sprayings, whether organic or not. It's not rocket science, but if you don't do it right you probably won't get fruit and your tree could die. Who knew?

Many smart growers choose native fruit trees with unfamiliar fruit. Natives are both hearty and disease and pest resistant. Philip Perlman is a retired video and filmmaker and a founder of The Kitchen, a performing arts org in New York City. These days he farmdens in Accord, and has become so smitten with the pawpaw tree that he has planted over 60 of them—a real pawpaw plantation! Pawpaws are a delicious, tropical-tasting fruit that is distantly related to the banana. Philip sells his extras to the High Falls Food Co-op, where you can get them for a few weeks in September. Lee Reich points out that pawpaw trees are very beautiful in all seasons. They also begin bearing in just three or four years. Another native tree that is recommended by the experts I asked is the persimmon. Philip likes the hearty American persimmon varieties, which bear a juicy, sweet-tart fruit in the fall. Ethan recommends mulberry trees, with a delicious fruit that looks like a blackberry.

Chestnuts take a long time—7 to 10 years to fruit—but they, too, are a favorite with our mavens. A generous neighbor gave me some fresh chestnuts once and they were shockingly good. Most native chestnuts were wiped out in the 20th century by blight, but now there are new blight-resistant varieties. Lee recommends hybrids and Philip likes the flavor of Chinese chestnuts best. Hazelnuts are also a hearty native nut and they grow in curious little cabbage-like shrouds.

There's something I haven't mentioned that is a problem with almost all fruit trees. Squirrels are the elephant in the room (or, er, garden). Philip recommends planting your trees far enough apart so that the little buggers can't jump from tree to tree. Birds, also, can be voracious. Chris Hewitt (CW publisher) once told me that smart old farmers would plant mulberries next to their cherry trees because the birds liked mulberries better.

I hope that I've whetted your appetite for tree fruit and nuts. But do your homework! Catalogs may entice, but as John Wightman points out, “You don't build a house by going to the lumberyard first,” and “don't plant more than you can care for.” It's a bit of work, but the payoff? John confides that “my apples taste better to me than any other apples do,” and your fruit probably will, too. He thinks it's the taste of pride.

Maria Reidelbach is the proprietress of Homegrown Mini-Golf on Kelder's Farm: wacky putting greens set in a tasting garden of edible plants.

Tree fruit related events in May:

Lee Reich plant sale (keep an eye on his blog for details)

Kickstarter project to rebuild the historic cider house at Breezy Hill Orchard: kickstarter.com, search Breezy Hill

Good resources:

Appleseed Permaculture: appleseedpermaculture.com

Lee Reich's website and blog: leereich.com

Fruit Production for the Home Gardener, Penn State: http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/fphg

The Pruning Book, by Lee Reich

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, by Lee Reich

Landscaping with Fruit, by Lee Reich

The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, by Rosalind Creasy

New York Nut Growers Association: nynga.org

Northern Nut Growers Association: nutgrowing.org

Local commercial orchards mentioned above:

Breezy Hill Orchard, Staatsburg

Stone Ridge Orchard, Stone Ridge

Wightman Fruit Farm, Kerhonkson

New records being broken as new developments arise.

When Camoin Associates studied the potential economic impact of the Walkway Over the Hudson in 2007, they used a projected attendance figure of 267,000 visits a year. Even, at those numbers, the predictions were positive; the Walkway State Historic Park draws more like half a million visits a year—and those are just the ones who bother to sign in.

And why not? The longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world (the former railroad span is 1.28 miles long), the Walkway is an outstanding place to do all sorts of things. Its incomparable advantages for viewing fireworks or hot air balloon races are obvious, but under the stewardship of Walkway Executive Director Elizabeth Waldstein-Hart, the park’s programming has been a glorious patchwork of any and every good thing people can think of to do 212 feet above the Hudson River. Art shows, pet shows, menorah lightings, stargazing and the Hokey Pokey are but a few of the ideas that have been brought to life. Celebrations of everything from Halloween to International Women’s Day have been enhanced by the spectacular setting.

The Hokey Pokey shindig was literally a world-class success, breaking the Guinness World Record for line dance length, and was such fun that a variation is planned for May 4, which happens to be I Love My Park Day. “Not the Hokey Pokey this time,” says Waldstein-Hart. “We’re going to have a line of people doing a series of steps choreographed by Livia Vanaver of Vanaver Caravan… I Love My Park Day is a day for people to come out and enjoy, to launch the season. The I Love NY people are very supportive—all 3,000 people will be asked to don I Love New York T-shirts, and we’re reproducing the original I Love NY song so that it works with our record-breaking dance effort.

“And Guinness will be here again, which makes it fun; it’s something some people just like to cross off their bucket lists. The sound will be better this year—Cumulus Media and WEOK will be broadcasting live, and we’re asking people to bring AM radios and play the broadcast. Last year, talking to the Guinness staff, they said it was so lovely—2,500 people happy and smiling and into it. It was a wonderful gathering—all of that positive energy.”

Yet another dramatically uplifting element is scheduled to be added to the Walkway experience in 2013, as construction begins on an elevator that will glide visitors smoothly and spectacularly from Water Street in Poughkeepsie to the walkway deck. Funded by a $2.4 million federal grant obtained by Walkway Over the Hudson with support from retired Congressman and Walkway booster Maurice Hinchey and administered through the New York State Department of Transportation, the 21-story elevator will add yet another spectacular component to the Walkway experience.

“Designing and engineering it has taken longer than anticipated,” says Waldstein-Hart, “partially because we needed a unique design. Outdoor elevators are normally found in amusement parks or in construction environments, huge skyscrapers for example. The design needed to be adapted and customized for this unique facility. It needs to be industrial in its ability to carry people 21 stories on a routine basis, but beautiful and fun.

“We’re going to get it right, and all the players are working together—NYSDOT, the Parks Department, and BCI Construction out of Albany. It takes time, but we’re still on track for a fall opening in 2013, although there’s no exact date yet. Like a lot of people, I’m just waiting for the final schedule to come out, any day now. BCI has made improvements—revisions and tweaks for a better experience. Those have been submitted to the DOT, and subsequently approved.

“A great deal of the construction is being done off site, over the summer, with installation in late summer or early fall followed by testing and final tweaking; right now we’re hoping to have the grand opening in October. It probably won’t be open full time the first winter—we’ll open for the rest of the 2013 season, see how it goes, and reevaluate.

“We don’t know exactly how we’re approaching the opening yet, but it’s going to be fun adding it to our programming. The possibilities…we could do seniors’ days, school group days. Maybe we could bring in a hypnotherapist and use it as a tool for helping people with acrophobia.”

The 90-second ride will be free for visitors, and will be an easy connection to the Poughkeepsie Metro-North station. And it’s only the most dramatic of several planned improvements in access and connectivity.

“We have a number of projects in the works,” says Waldstein-Hart. “We will be connecting with the Dutchess Rail Trail, and adding visitor centers and bathrooms on both ends.” The neighborhood near the entrance on the Poughkeepsie side is well-served by restaurants, cafes, and pubs, their viability much enhanced by the Walkway’s drawing power; the Walkway organization and parks folks have issued a call for new vendors to serve visitors at both entry points.

From Highland, visitors will be able to access yet another trail network that can take them to New Paltz—and from there, eventually on to Rosendale, where yet another trestle (the Wallkill Valley Railroad span with its exquisite views of the Rondout Creek and the town’s central hamlet) is on track, so to speak, to open to the public in June, a sort of kid brother to the Walkway. Ultimately, bicyclists and walkers will be able to go from Hopewell Junction to Kingston—a journey that offers access to quite a few fine attractions along the way.

The grand vision has been embraced by local government. Waterfront improvements on the east end are integrated as part of the Waterfront Redevelopment Strategy and Rezoning Project being undertaken by the county and the city of Poughkeepsie. Funded privately by the Dyson Foundation, that effort will include plans for major park improvements, green infrastructure initiatives, an economic feasibility and financing analysis, phasing steps, and draft waterfront rezoning “to fully position the area for subsequent implementation,” according to a Dutchess County press release. Lloyd, too, is involved in rezoning to better leverage its Walkway access. Stakeholder meetings on the strategy have drawn 100 participants, and Waldstein-Hart couldn’t be more thrilled.

“People from all over the world come here to walk and enjoy,” she says, “and we are working on collaborative marketing and branding, while doing a lot of things for fun. In the three years I’ve been working here, there have been so many amazing moments. I went out there with a Poughkeepsie native and she was amazed. She said, “Every time I’m out here, I meet new people I’ve never encountered in decades of living here.”

There are no plans to institute a user fee for access to the Walkway, although nominal fees are charged for some of the special events held. “Over time, as we develop the visitor centers, we’ll look at ways to generate revenue and enhance our endowment for long-term stewardship and repairs,” says Waldstein-Hart. “We’ll do our part and the Parks Department and NYS Bridge Authority will do theirs.”

As spring unfolds into summer and we’re all looking for recreational opportunities, stay tuned for more exciting events at walkway.org.

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