Rockefeller Fridays Details & Directions

*All hikes will leave 10 minutes after designated meeting time and are a suggested donation of $5 per family.

Friday, September 17th
Pocantico River Trail
Rockefeller Preserve, Sleepy Hollow
Meeting Time: 4:00 p.m.
Meeting Place: At the trail head along Sleepy Hollow Road
Directions: Heading west on Bedford Road (448) turn left on Sleepy Hollow Road. Go through the stop sign and continue 1/2 mile to the trail head. There is a white farmhouse next to the entrance gate. Parking is all along Sleepy Hollow Road. If you park near the trail, try to park nose-in rather than parallel to leave space for other vehicles. Parking is limited--carpool if possible.
Details: This is a beautiful trail along the Pocantico River and is one of our favorites! It's a mostly flat, wide trail--strollers are fine here, but jog strollers are best. BYO snacks and water.
Note: Use caution when walking with kids to the trail. The trail head is on a blind curve and folks tend to whiz around the bend. Stay near the boulders as you walk to the start of the trail.

Harvest Day on the Farm

Today was the last of the summer's farm Saturdays and spent it celebrating the harvest. From baking bread to hiking through the gardens to see the farm's bursting bounty of fruits and vegetables before harvesting some of our own, our morning was filled with activity and adventure.

We were fortunate to spend most of the morning with Robin, one of the farm's workers, as he lead us on a tour of the fields to spot vines full of ripe cantaloupes, honeydews, and watermelons. Little did the kids know that he had stashed a big, beautiful watermelon in a cooler to share with all of them later. Robin has a natural ease with children. He was brimming with both knowledge about the farm's produce and enthusiasm for sharing that knowledge with the kids and parents alike. He patiently answered our questions, plucked fallen, ripe pears for everyone to enjoy as we hiked and pointed out everything from stink bugs to kale to a huge paper wasp's nest hidden in a pear tree.

He then brought the children over to a section of the garden where they were able to harvest their own grape tomatoes, cucumbers, red and green peppers, and a couple of rogue eggplant they found in the meadow. Some of the kids happily ate their cucumbers like apples, skins and all, warm from the sun and straight from the vine.

With small arms laden with produce, we hiked back up to the farm store where everyone enjoyed their freshly baked bread with butter and local honey from the farm along with slabs of cool, juicy watermelon Robin passed around with a laugh and a grin.

It was a lovely way to end our summer season.

Bugs, Butterflies, Worms & Compost

Our day at the farm today was spent learning about and searching for the myriad critters that are either the friends or foes of farmers everywhere.

We started our day at one of the kids' favorite spots on the farm--the chicken coops! One of the things that the kids would learn later during their visit to the composting area was that the chickens serve many purposes on the farm aside from the gorgeous eggs they lay each day. But for the time being, collecting eggs was the focus. They filled their baskets quickly, some of them more tentative than others. Some of the hens can be quick to peck at hands that are trying to reach beneath them for the eggs that lie in the cozy, sawdust-filled nesting boxes, while others languish comfortably waiting to be relived of the pile under their feathers. And then there are the more accessible chicken-free nesting boxes that are full of eggs--light brown, darker brown, pale blue, pale green, creamy white--and the kids like to gather those the most! The farm's free-range hens produce eggs of a variety of hues because they forage for food in the orchard and the color of the eggs shows their varied diet.

After a good time spent in the hen house we headed back up to our picnic tables where the kids created watercolor butterflies for mobiles they would create later. We gathered fallen sticks from the orchard's apple trees on our way back from the chickens to use to hang the butterflies when they were dry.

When the art project was complete we were joined by the farm's proprietor, Josh Morgentheau for a mini-lesson about good bugs and bad bugs before heading out into the orchard for some hunting. Josh truly loves what he is doing and his passion for the farm, its ecology and its mission is palpable. He speaks with conviction about his practices and about his own growth as a new farmer. He is also an excellent teacher, and while I spent time among the queen anne's lace, butterfly weed and mugwort with the children catching whatever we could, Josh fielded questions from parents with an impressive depth of knowledge. The children were thrilled to find various larvae snuggled on the undersides of apple tree-leaves, to pick ladybugs from the meadow grasses, to chase the monarchs and to catch the grasshoppers that sprang up from all directions.

We then hiked over to the composting area where the kids were fascinated by the garbage that would soon become the farm's "black gold." It was there that they learned that the farm's hens not only eat the compost, but contribute to the soil in their own way--chicken poop makes great fertilizer!

The day ended with the kids assembling their butterfly creations on the patio with some apple cider donuts to help them along.

July on the Farm

Stay tuned for accounts of our July peach and creek farm forays!

Solstice Fairies on the Farm

The summer solstice, that day of mischief and magic marking the beginning of the summer season, falls on Monday, June 21st this year. In honor of midsummer's arrival, we spent a lovely Saturday morning on the farm hiking and building fairy houses for the pixies and little folk that would be celebrating the new season by moonlight.

This is sure to become an annual event for Kids Unplugged at Fishkill Farms and you can see the photos of last year's fairy houses here.

I like to honor the changing seasons with the children for several reasons, and the farm is the perfect venue for doing so. Our busy, modern lives have lead us away from the deep connection with the land and the earth's natural rhythms that our ancestors had. One needs only to read some of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books to see how closely in sync family life was with nature and the seasons. I think that even though our present way of life disconnects us, to a large extent, from those natural, seasonal cycles, children (and adults) are still deeply affected by the changing seasons and acknowledging and celebrating these shifts can be very meaningful. It can also help children as they transition from one season to another.

At the same time, life on the farm continues to observe the rhythm of the seasons. The name midsummer itself is a misnomer--how could the first day of summer be in the middle of summer? But for farmers, the first day of summer was indeed the middle of the growing season. Seeds were sown earlier in the spring, when danger of frost had passed and the sun had warmed and thawed the ground so that it could be worked again. By midsummer's night, those early crops were thriving, much of the hard work of preparing the fields was finished and it would be a few more weeks before the real work of harvesting would begin. Midsummer was an opportunity to relax a bit--to celebrate the long, warm, sunny days that would soon ripen the bounty of the fields.

And historically, it is on midsummer's night, under June's full honey moon, that the fairies come out to dance and make mischief and bring love and lead unsuspecting humans astray into the forest. This, obviously, is the part that the children love the most.

So, after talking about the solstice and the farmers and then the fairies, and harnessing their spirit of magic and mystery, we spent the morning hiking out along a couple of the old farm roads collecting materials which would later become the makings of fairy houses. Then we found a quiet little woodland spot where they went to work on their creations. And when it was time to go, they did not want to stop. Only the promise of a good fairy story and some of the farm's homemade ice cream could lure them out of the woods and away from their elfin homes.

A Morning in Fishkill's Gardens

The last of our Spring Saturdays on the Farm was spent exploring in and around Fishkill Farms' orchards and 5-acres of organic vegetable gardens learning about all of the amazing produce that is grown there. After reading a story and playing a web game illustrating the interconnectedness of the farm's ecosystem, Mark Doyle, the farm's overseer and jack-of-all-trades, took the kids on a tour that began with a visit to the greenhouse to see where all the farm's seedlings are born. At the greenhouse we met up with Logan, one of the farm interns, and together we all hiked down the farm road past a stand of cherry trees whose fruit was partially damaged by a recent late season frost. We learned how cherries, which are composed of a lot of water, can freeze and die when a frost hits after they've begun to grow and saw first hand how susceptible produce can be to adverse weather conditions. We walked down to the gardens to see the onions, smell the garlic, identify last season's broccoli rabe and learn about crop rotation. We talked about good bugs and bad bugs and rain and drought. And when our tour was over we hiked back up the hill to make some water color paintings inspired by what we saw.

Using the frost-bitten cherries as a jumping off point, we then dissected some cherry tomatoes and played a game that taught the kids about the challenges seeds face when attempting to become plants. We finished the day with the farm's cinnamon-sugar donuts and a rousing reading of Grandma Lena's Big Ol' Turnip by Denia Lewis Hester. Fun and learning was had by all!

Several families stayed for a while afterward to picnic on the patio and shop in the farm's market which opens officially for the season this coming Saturday, May 29th. As much as I love being at the farm during the off-season, I find myself looking forward to the bustle of the coming summer, not to mention the bountiful harvest that is just on the horizon. Summer at the farm brings strawberries, cherries, blueberries, peaches and nectarines to pick as well as a farm market filled to the brim with produce from the gardens. Salad greens are already available and the peas are coming soon. I'm so glad it's almost the time of year when I don't have to buy a single vegetable from outside of our local area--and Fishkill Farms is just the place to start! Check out the farm's website to learn more about the coming season.

Wednesday's Rockwood Romp

This afternoon our Wacky Wednesday was spent amidst the tall meadow grasses and buttercups at Rockwood Hall in the Rockefeller Preserve. This is easily one of my favorite spots in the park and is yet another great place for the kids to hike due to the various trail options and short loops that abound in this section of the preserve.

One of the features of this trail is the enormous weeping beech tree that you encounter just at the top of the trail before you get to the old foundation. (For more history about this trail, check out the report from a 2009 winter hike here). The towering beech has re-rooted in several places along the ground beneath its drooping boughs thus creating a huge, enclosed space for the children to climb and play. For a long time, the kids were attracted to the two Sergeant Hemlocks on the grounds for climbing as they are lower to the ground than the beech and easier for them to scale. After talking to the preserve manager I learned that the hemlocks were fragile species and she instead encouraged the kids to climb the beech. It's definitely hard to steer them away from those hemlocks, but luckily the beech is the first tree they come to on the trail, so that helps!

I really think they could spend an entire Wacky Wednesday under and atop the beech tree's limbs, but after a while I lured them along the trail toward the foundation and Rockwood's lower loop. The walls of the old foundation are another spot upon which they love to balance and climb and slide and they spent a good amount of time there before taking the lower trail at a run. After that, there was some cavorting in the meadow among the tall grass and buttercups, wildflower bouquets to pick, and games of tag and tackle to be had. They ended up yet again under the beech at the end of the trail before it was time to head home.

We did notice that the beech lost a pretty large limb, most likely in one of the late winter storms which hit us this past season. Some of the leaves of the beech were browning around their edges, and it seemed that it wasn't just those near the fallen limb that were getting brown but all over the tree. I'm a little worried about that. This would be a terrible tree to lose.