Catskills Folk Connection's 2019 programs were successful in spite of funding delays caused by the federal government shut-down in early spring. Once substitute funding was secured, CFC went on to complete it's usual offerings, with a couple of adjustments. Presentations totaled seven square dances, two festival foodways programs and one Catskills Folk Lyceum lecture plus field work for a 2020 folk art exhibit. Scheduling constraints postponed work on the vernacular architecture project (Roxbury's Six Stone Houses) and a second Lyceum lecture on historic preservation, both of which will be pursued later.
2019 Square Dances
Several square dances were in venues CFC has used before: at the Pine Hill Community Center with its excellent dance floor, at the Bovina Community Hall - a well-known square dance venue, at the Walton Grange which is favored by a cluster of dedicated dancers, and of course at Roxbury Arts Group's Fiddlers! event. Other dances took place at new venues with access to new and differennt audiences: at the regional Catskills Visitors Center, as part of the street festival Celebrate Roxbury!, and in collaboration with an agri-tourism project at a goat dairy farm in Andes, NY.
The community halls and grange were well attended, attracting the usual local enthusiasts plus some visitors to the region. The visitors' center and the Roxbury celebration were festival settings in which the audience strolled in and out. That was fine for listening to live music but made it hard to maintain a square dance. The highlights of the season were at the goat farm in Andes and at Fiddlers! The goat farm owners had worked hard to provide a good dance floor on the hay mow level of their barn. Support and advertising from a regional economic development group, plus the good food the farmers' offered, attracted many new potential dancers, resulting in the largest dance of the season: four squares dancing simultaneously all evening.
Members of Fiddlin' Future play at Roxbury Arts Group's Fiddlers!
Fiddlers!, an annual concert and dance highlighting a popular Catskills instrument, attracted enough dancers for one or two squares during the time devoted to dancing. The greatest success at Fiddlers was the participation of a youth fiddle group, called Fiddlin' Future. They are from the Adirondacks and are associated with Jackie Hobbs and the Old-Tyme Fiddlers Association there. The youthful fiddlers took part in the dancing, joined the Tremperskill Boys on stage to play for dances, and at the end of the entire event were the stars of the jam organized with the event's professional concert performers. In the Adirondacks, at least, we can say that the future of square dancing and traditional fiddle music is in good hands.
2019 Festivals: Focus on Foodways
Outdoor festivals are excellent for reaching large numbers of people, many of whom may be new to Catskills Folk Connection. They offer opportunities to engage the audience in displays and demonstrations of Catskills Folk Connection programs and to offerfcommunicaition about future events. Because at festivals the audience is in motion, strolling by in shopping mode, some of our programs work better than others.
Meridale Dairy Fest
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| Mary Ann Warren shares wild leeksoup made from leeks she harvested in the Catskills forest. |
Food traditions catch the eye, and tastings offer time for the tradition bearer to describe the tradition or for the folklorist to describe other CFC programs. In 2018 and 2019 at the two-day Meridale Dairy Fest tradition bearer Mary Ann Warren, taught by her family to dig wild leeks, was able to share tastings of potato - wild leek soup at CFC's booth. She is also a caterer and so is qualified to serve food tothe public. With the advent of certified community kitchens in our regionsCatskills Folk Connection may in the future be able to help tradition bearers from other cultures to serve samples of their traditional foods. How about sauerkraut?
Cauliflower Festival
At the Cauliflower Festival folklorist Ginny Scheer reported on food traditions she learned from her late husband, Walter Meade, a native of the Catskills who was an outdoorsman and nature photographer. Walt's family was poor when he was a youth and especially during the Great Depression adapted many foods in response to the scarcity of meat.
Ginny shared Walt's recipe for "fall soup" that made use of less-important parts of beef left over from fall slaughtering, "johnny cake and milk" that was Walt's family's Sunday supper, baked custard made from locally-sourced eggs and milk, and what Ginny called "Hunter's Bisquick." A good student, Walt used to skip school - with his mother's approval. He hunted small game, especially grey squirrels, that would add protein for the family's diet. Sometimes he would be away at dinner time or even overnight. So Katherine, his Mom, would pack for him some flour with salt and baking powder and some butter to carry in his pocket so he could make a supper of wild game and biscuits baked on a hot rock. Fall soup, custard and johnny cake and milk were some of Walt's favorite foods as an adult. As so often happens, the hardship diet of the past becomes the comfort food of the present.
Catskills Folk Lyceum
A "lyceum" was the 19th century's equivalent of "adult educatiion." Traveling speakers, like itinerant painters and dancing masters, moved from village to village to share their messages. Sometimes they were religious, sometimes political or scientific, but all sought the attention and sometimes allegiance of the adult listeners. So "lyceum" seemed a good word to choose for Catskills Folk Connection's lecture series. Our events are held in a range of locations around the region - like the traveling speakers of over a century ago and they seek to draw attention to the important traditional expressions and practicesof the diverse cultures of the Catskill Mountains.
Ryan Trapani harvesting bark.
2019's Lyceum featured a dynamic speaker from the Catskill Forest Association, its Executive Director, Ryan Trapani. He spoke knowledgeably from his own experience about foods that can be gleaned from the Catskills forest. Most commonly thought of as food from the forest are berries and other fruit. Ryan discussed many of these, including blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, but also the less commonly known thimbleberry. He gave similarly detailed attention to nuts, roots, tree bark and products from the trunk used for food and medicine, a wide variety of "greens," plus mushrooms and finally fauna. Everyone in the audience left with a sense that food from the forest was plentiful and various, not rare or exotic. Catskills Folk Connection's foodways presentations at festivals have focused on one of the wild edibles - wild leeks - featured in Ryan's talk. Perhaps with Ryan's assisstance and knowledge of local tradition bearers we can present more wild foods in the future.
Additional 2019 folklife activities will be presented in upcoming posts.
