New York is an agricultural powerhouse, you may be surprised to learn. The state ranks in the top 10 nationally in no fewer than 14 crop and value-added agricultural products: number one in yogurt, number two in apples and cabbage, top 10 in tomatoes and potatoes, to name a few. Forty-three percent of New York’s wine grapes go to California for their wine industry. This productivity is all the more amazing when one considers that the transition from dairy that is going on leaves much farmland, for the time being, unused, Our farmland has the potential to be even more productive—and many believe that it will soon need to.
Otesaga Golf Season Extended To March 31 COOPERSTOWN Those who think that golf is just a summer hobby should hang on to their clubs and get ready to sharpen their skills this winter. The Otesaga Resort Hotel is introducing a state-of-the-art TrackMan indoor golf simulator at its Leatherstocking Golf Course Clubhouse, allowing participants to “play” the resort’s famed course in a whole new way now through March 31. Golfers can choose from more than 200 golf courses to play virtually, including such legends as Leatherstocking and Pebble Beach. Designed in 1909 by golf course architect Devereux Emmet, the 18-hole Leatherstocking Golf Course offers scenic views of Otsego Lake. The simulator offers the same sloping fairways and serious water hazards of the par-72 course, along with raised “blind” greens for a challenging virtual course. Interested participants can pick their virtual “tee time” online, 14 days in advance, and can choose times between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. from Wednesdays through Sundays. There is a 48-hour cancellation policy and booking prices start at $40.00 per person. Golf instruction and swing analysis are also available for an additional fee. For more information about the TrackMan indoor golf simulator and the resort’s Winter Golf Package, please visit www.Otesaga.com.
COMMUNITY CAT FORUM—4 p.m. The community is invited to join local animal shelters and experts to discuss how we can help cats in need and steps to mitigate overpopulation. Held at the Foothills Performing Arts and Civic Center, Oneonta. Visit facebook.com/SQSPCA/
BLOOD DRIVE—1-6 p.m. Save up to three lives with the American Red Cross. Quality Inn, 5206 State Highway 23, Oneonta. Register at redcrossblood.org
Originally published in October in “Water Front,” an online blog by Peter Mantius, this article is being reprinted with permission from Mantius because of its relevance to issues currently threatening water bodies statewide, including challenges to keeping our freshwater resources clean and climate-caused threats.
GENEVA, NY – A comprehensive plan to cut phosphorus pollution in the Seneca-Keuka Watershed won final state approval this week, providing a roadmap for protecting the two lakes from toxic algal blooms and flooding driven by climate change.
The 9E report recommends that mitigation efforts focus on Seneca-Keuka Watershed subbasins that produce the most phosphorus.
The Nine Element Plan, or 9E, was a “grass roots effort led by Finger Lakes watershed communities to actively restore these prized waters,” said Basil Seggos, commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation. The DEC and the Department of State jointly approved the project.
Phosphorus is identified as a “primary driver” of outbreaks of cyanobacteria, or harmful algal blooms (HABs), that have plagued the lakes for at least the past seven years.
Baker Barn in Richfield Springs, built 1882. (Photo by Cliff Oram Photography)
The Swart-Wilcox House, the oldest in Oneonta, is looking for a 19th-century English barn to replace the original one destroyed by fire in 1968.
Upstate New York is rural. Its towns, villages, and cities are spread out and difficult to reach. There are fields and forests and lakes. For most of its over-200-year history agriculture has been, and still might be, the main industry. Upstate New York is beautiful, bucolic, serene, clear, compelling. Rolling hills encircle cool lakes; fields interrupt clumps of forest. Farmhouses, barns, and outbuildings reveal their uses by their shapes and locations. Barns, in fact, are the distinctive feature of our part of the state. Early farms had multiple crops and livestock—wheat, oats, rye; sheep, cows, pigs, chickens—which called for multiple buildings: horse barns, ox barns, hay barns, chicken houses, workshops, corn cribs, granaries, wagon sheds, and the like. The farms resembled villages.
This Saturday, October 15, the world will recognize, as it does every year, the importance of the contributions of rural women and girls, including indigenous women, who live and work in remote and rural, often poverty-stricken, communities of the world. These strong women and girls play a key role in enhancing agricultural development, managing natural resources, adopting climate-resilient agricultural approaches, and planning against malnutrition and food insecurity.
The International Day of Rural Women was officially proclaimed by a resolution adopted by the United Nations in December 2007. The day celebrates and honors the role, often stereotyped but extremely substantial, of rural women who continue to face historic discrimination in many areas, including land and livestock ownership, equal pay, participation in meaningful decision-making, and access to resources such as credit and markets. This U.N. proclamation was the outgrowth of the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, 12 years previously, wherein the idea of celebrating and supporting women was put forth. The date, October 15, was determined because, since 1945, World Food Day has been celebrated on October 16 and it seemed entirely relevant to honor rural women for their contributions to agriculture, food production, and food safety around the same time.
A real life rodeo took place in the Schuyler Lake Firemen’s Field on Sunday morning, September 18. Left to right on horseback: Joseph Milton, Jacob Rounds, and Steve Batchelder assembled with their dogs left to right: Scooby, Tinsley and Nova, try to capture a few roaming heifers who escaped from down the road. (Photo by Kathleen Peters)
Kathleen Peters
Upstate New Yorkers are used to seeing livestock every day and almost everywhere. Even amid the economic crisis in local agriculture, the Leatherstocking region is rich in farms and farm animals. Take a 10-minute drive in any direction from Cooperstown or Oneonta and you will encounter horses, dairy cattle, beefers, sheep, goats, hogs, llamas, alpacas, and more, usually idling peacefully within the fences, barns, and pastures of their hard working owners.
Sometimes we forget that the livestock are actually “live” and have minds of their own. Such was the case when seven cows went missing about a month ago from a family farm on County Highway 22 in Exeter. Three of them were soon recovered; two adults have been sighted in the vacant fields on Truman Road, and two of the other freedom-loving heifers continued to roam the badlands off Taylor Road, leaving their distinctive tracks and fertilizer patties in their wake.
Our column, The Life of the Land, is an exploration of local agricultural practices. Several of our pieces will focus on farms which raise grass-fed animals; here we address the environmental implications of locally raised livestock.
It is indisputable that industrial livestock management is an ecological disaster. This has led to pronouncements from numerous authoritative agencies to eat “less meat” or even “no meat”. Yet grass-fed production of livestock is an important and growing component of our local agricultural economy. For those of us who wish to support these farms, is their meat actually environmentally “better meat”?
Climate change and land use are inextricably bound together. The collision between the two creates tension. We are experiencing that tension in multiple ways — not least of which is the drive to create more renewable energy through use of solar and wind-power generation on central New York farmland.
There currently are proposals — some approved and some being considered — to develop large solar and wind “farms” throughout upstate New York, including Schoharie, Delaware, and Schenectady counties.
In some cases, these projects will reduce or eliminate crop production from previously fertile farmland and reduce or eliminate grazing capacity for livestock. The result of this will be a reduction in agricultural productivity
in central New York and removal of these lands from agricultural production for at least a generation.
Otsego 2000 was instrumental in the elimination of hydrofracking for natural gas in New York and has advocated for responsible development of solar and wind energy production for local use. Large-scale production of solar and wind energy, however, can be quite a different proposition if it involves taking potentially productive farmland out of service or fragmenting the ecological integrity of natural systems.
New York’s governor delivers a state-of-the-state address at the start of each calendar year; the speech a sitting governor gives at the onset of an election year is, however, always something a little different, a little more ambitious in scope.
Such is the case today (January 5) with a brief-by-comparison speech from Governor Kathy Hochul – her first since assuming the mantle after disgraced ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo stepped down. Hers was an address filled with the usual something-for-everybody on the menu – with very little that any opponents could attack outright. And, the address appears to open the door for discussions on bail reform.
But a state-of-the-state is rather like looking through an annual gift catalog – there are plenty of things in there that one would put on a wish list. Only a few of them stand a chance of showing up when the time for gift-giving arrives.
Joseph Edward Zaczek passed away in peace on October 3, 2021 at the UHS Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, N.Y. following a brief illness. Joe was born on April 25,1951 in Deposit, N.Y. He attended and graduated from Mt. Upton Central School and SUNY Delhi.
Joe’s lifetime career was in agriculture. The proof of his love for the land was reflected in the joy he brought to many with his famous ‘Mt Upton Sweet Corn’. He also took great pleasure in the machinery that is the driving force in agriculture. He loved his John Deere collection.
His contributions to the community impacted many. Joe was the transportation supervisor at GMU Central School from 1991 until his retirement in 2021. He was a Town of Guilford Board Member. Joe spent 25 years of his life as a fireman at the Borden Hose Fire Company in Mt Upton, N.Y. He was an avid and talented bowler. He bowled a perfect game numerous times. Out of all his many endeavors, he most enjoyed spending time with his beloved grandchildren and watching their sporting events.
The bright, beautiful Harvest Moon, come to shine on our tired fields and woodlands, has passed. The leaves have begun to turn, the temperatures are dancing about, deciding which way to go, and we are, this very week, heading into the New York state hunting season, a few months of search and shoot for the many hunters of our county. They hunt not only white-tailed deer, but also other fur-bearing and feathered animals: bear, coyote, fox, opossum, weasel, bobcat, small game, migratory game birds, waterfowl, wild turkey, and they hunt with bows, crossbows, muzzleloaders, handguns, shotguns and rifles.
Last year in Otsego County, 3,088 white-tailed bucks were taken, 2,627 does, and 709 fawns, with 253,990 white tails taken in all throughout the state – the most on record – up from 224,190 in 2019.
Deer hunting is not new, although as a sport it is relatively young. Artifacts found in Germany reveal evidence of hunting 350,000 years ago, while the cave paintings in France date from 30,000 years ago. It was during the mid-Paleolithic period (the Stone Age) that early man developed the tools — of stone, bone and wood — to kill, and the age of the hunter/gatherer improved upon that of the previous gatherer/scavenger.
LAKEFRONT CONCERT – 7 p.m. 3 local organizations collaborate to present concerts at Lake Front Park. This week enjoy a performance of Barn Paint Blue. Lake Front Park, Cooperstown. Visit www.wearecooperstown.com
Can good genetics help ag businesses
be good environmental stewards?
A farm in Middlefield is on the cutting edge
By KEVIN LIMITI • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com
A herd of sheep graze on a farm in the town of Middlefield. (Kevin Limiti/AllOTSEGO.com)
MIDDLEFIELD – Agriculture is often blamed for a negative impact on climate change. However, at a farm near Cooperstown run by twins Owen Weikert and Dr. Ben Weikert, that perception is exactly what they are working to change.
The Katahdin sheep are selectively bred by studying their genetic makeup in order to calculate things like maternal ability, how to create sheep that need less shearing and less food, and to reduce herd size.
Owen Weikert said that upstate agriculture is at a “tipping point” and that dairy farms have been “really decimated.”
“A lot of people are interested in getting out of the cattle business,” Weikert said. Therefore the new way of raising livestock might be the future of agriculture for not only Upstate but the entire country, he said.
By selecting different DNA, it is used to find out how the biological process of the animals interact with each other, and learn how to introduce beneficial characteristics into livestock that will allow breeding to be easier.
Maybe when marijuana vendors appear at Disney World, or when the venerable theme park comes up with a Marijuana Mile theme ride, or maybe Marijuana Maelstrom.
Then, perhaps, the Village of Cooperstown – “the pinnacle” of youth baseball camps, according to Lunetta Swartout, Cooperstown Stays proprietor, (and she ought to know) – should approve pot shops, or a “recreational cannabis dispensary,” or whatever, along Main Street in Baseball’s Mecca.
Maybe then, but now the debate is more than theoretical.
Simmering, simmering for years, marijuana legalization moved to the front burner over the weekend, when Governor Cuomo and the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly agreed on legislation “to legalize adult-use cannabis.” The Assembly and Senate approved the bill Tuesday, and Cuomo was expected to sign it.
