Mike and Heidi Ferraro took over Saugerties’ famous Deutsche Metzgerei in 2001 when its former owners, Austrian-born brothers Bill and Peter Muellner, hung up their aprons after more than 50 years of butchering and smoking meats for the local clientele.
For 19th century Woodstockers, Grant’s visit to their mountain was a seminal moment of recognition. His stay may have been brief but here was validation and birth as Woodstock began the transition from industries that took from the land — such as quarrying and tanning — to an economy and lifestyle based on what others saw in the land.
When Ralph and Mary Adamucci began selling vegetables out of their farmstand in 1919, they probably had no intention of building a Hudson Valley grocery and nursery dynasty.
A letter to my family (which hopefully inspires you to create yours).
The Catskills mark the northern edge of Appalachia, a region with a 37 percent higher mortality rate for “diseases of despair”—suicide, alcohol and drug overdose—than the rest of the country.
If I only fished to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Hudson Valley was the brickmaking capital of the world, producing more than a billion bricks a year and employing nearly 10,000 people in more than 120 brickyards. By the late 1970s, the once-mighty molded-brick industry was no more. One by one, the great yards had closed their gates, leaving behind a small-but-colorful legacy of people who remember the industry in its prime.
After being diagnosed with a benign brain tumor the size of a golf ball, which caused unsteady footing, dizziness and eventual strokes, Annalee Orsulich set out to recreate a potion she once drank while studying herbal medicine in Brazil.
The donor named it in honor of her father, “who not only enabled me to own the property, but who instilled in me his love of animals. And now visitors will enjoy it too.”
Saugerties has a long-enough history that you can just about trace the phases of it in the growth and decline of interest in that history. A look at the earliest photograph of Saugerties is the best way to show history is on the upswing right now.