This Month’s Featured Articles…

“It was start a theater or drive to Alaska,” Linda MacNish said of the decision she and Lynne Haydn faced before opening The Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, NY. Mac-Haydn is the flagship of live theater in Columbia County. In 1969, seeing a professional musical meant either going to New York City or attending a rare tour stop in Schenectady. Haydn was an aspiring actress and director and MacNish managed performers and had started the city’s first luncheon theater, when they met in New York. Their [...]

It was a Tuesday night in March, before daylight saving time, so it was dark at 6 pm as I headed for the Plant & Sip event in downtown Troy, NY. And it was cold the way it can be in March. But when I stepped into the room where the event was being held, there was a sensation of sunshine and life.  At tables scattered around the room were groups of two, four, and six people, chatting and sipping in anticipation of planting. At [...]

Originally from France, Romane Recalde moved to the United States to pursue a career in modeling. After the pandemic, she and her husband moved upstate and planted their roots – pun intended – in Amenia, NY.  “We moved here because this area reminds me so much of home,” Romane said. “I grew up in the remote French countryside outside of Bordeaux. The nearest village has a population of 600 people. Our garden at home was wild and natural, so when we moved here, I found [...]

In 2016, Matt and Miranda Mobley began their search for land in the Hudson Valley region, looking for a place where they could grow food and create a gathering place for the local community. Matt, who grew up in Florida, was raised working on his family’s cattle ranch and in a number of restaurants they owned in the Tampa area. When he moved to New York City after college, he met his now-wife, Miranda, and they quickly bonded over their love of food. They spent [...]

Carole Clark worked in the restaurant industry for over 30 years – 19 of which were in Hudson, NY – so feeding people was something that she was more than familiar with. While she wasn’t working in the restaurant business at the start of the pandemic, she had been the chef proprietor of Charleston Restaurant in Hudson for many years previously and felt that she had to do something when the pandemic hit.  “I knew a lot of families in Hudson who were food insecure [...]