Archives for June 2009

Thanks to the unyielding support, in all kinds of weather, of our Kids Unplugged enthusiasts, our last Wacky Wednesday walk was a delight. Pulling into the parking lot at the Rockwood Hall trailhead this afternoon I was greeted by a sea of brightly colored slickers and large umbrellas tailgating in the pouring, pouring rain. Zoiks. It’s been some June. We waited a good 20-minutes for the deluge to clear and capitalized on the spots of blue between the clouds to hit {Read More}

Today marked our first official Saturday on the Farm at Fishkill Farms and we spent it celebrating the summer solstice on this cloudy June morning. There were several families who arrived to join us and the kids spent some time checking out the cherry trees and visiting the chickens while parents registered for the program and got situated. Our first activity was to make wildflower jewelry, namely daisy crowns and clover necklaces.The table was strewn with daisies and while the mommies {Read More}

This past Friday for our Early Summer Stroll of the week, Kids Unplugged visited the Rye Nature Center. This is a spot that I’ve wanted to get to for some time and it is a lovely place. A series of unmarked trails traverse the 52-acre property. Many of of these are interconnecting, include two numbered nature trails, and travel through varied terrain including woodland, wetlands, streams, fields and a pond. There is a small nature center with a host of {Read More}

Our hike in the Hardscrabble Wilderness Area in Pleasantville was an exercise in navigational skills. The intention was to hike part of the way along the white trail (the longest trail in the park at 1.5 miles) to loop back around on the orange trail. I’m pretty sure we passed the orange trail thinking that it was red as the initial blaze seemed pretty bright though those we saw down trail from the turnoff looked decidedly red, so we stayed {Read More}

This past Saturday marked the first day of the market season at Fishkill Farms. The farm was in full swing all day today–the beautifully renovated farm market was filled with customers, freshly picked produce and delicious local products. Visitors lingered to walk around the farm and listen to the Wahoo String Band on the terrace while enjoying the spectacular view of the farm and the lush green of its surrounding hills and meadows. And, happily, the kickoff for Saturdays on {Read More}

Finally after days and days and days of rain, the sky cleared just long enough for us to get a nice early afternoon hike in at the ever-charming Halsey Pond. This time we were here for the first in our June series of Early Summer Strolls and the demographic was decidedly toddler. Handfuls of gravel from the path flew from chubby hands with gleeful abandon into the pond. Baby ducks paddled quickly towards their mama much to our brood’s delight. {Read More}

Heading over the bridge as you enter Croton Gorge Park the first thing you see, depending upon the season and recent rainfall, is a rush of water coming out of a side opening in the New Croton Dam. If this is your first visit to this park you may think, “oh, that’s cool,” believing that gushing water to be the cascade through the dam from the New Croton Resevoir on the other side. Drive a two seconds further, and you {Read More}

Tuesday afternoon my girls and I headed up to spend some time at Fishkill Farms, learn the lay of the land a bit, and meet the new arrivals to the farm–a brand-new batch of baby, Rhode Island Red chicks–who would become the newest flock of laying hens at the farm. First off, here’s a bit of history about Fishkill Farms. In 1913, Henry Morgenthau Jr. (the U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1934-1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt) purchased land in East Fishkill, {Read More}

Today’s very rainy Wacky Wednesday was spent at the beautiful Sunny Ridge Preserve in Ossining. Slated to become a housing development in the late 1990s, the town of New Castle worked to acquire the land for open space wetland protection and just last spring turned it into a nature preserve. The land is home to a variety of wildlife habitats including fragile areas of wetlands. Visitors can explore some of the preserve’s 77-acres along a 2.8-mile system of carefully blazed, {Read More}

Tuesday afternoon my girls and I headed up to spend some time at Fishkill Farms, learn the lay of the land a bit, and meet the new arrivals to the farm–a brand-new batch of baby, Rhode Island Red chicks– who would become the newest flock of laying hens at the farm. First off, here’s a bit of history about Fishkill Farms. In 1913, Henry Morgenthau Jr. (the U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1934-1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt) purchased land in East Fishkill, {Read More}