Nick Hand

The Hudson Valley Seed Library

On my way up the Hudson Valley on my bicycle, I stopped off at Accord for a day or two. Accord is west of Poughkeepsie and just below the Catskills.

I'd heard a little about the Hudson Valley Seed Library, there had been an article a year or two back about the NY Times that I'd seen and it had a good feel about it.

The seed library save vegetable seeds from hardier North East vegetables from disappearing and reproduce them for sale. They also collect the stories behind the seeds, like the lady who was clearing out the house of her grandfather and found a jar of bean seeds that were maybe 20-30 years old. The type of bean had long since disappeared and it turned out that the folk at the seed library were able to grow the bean and reproduce a small number of beans for sale last year. I'll leave Ken to tell his own story.

 

 

Pizza and wings

So far on my ride up the Hudson Valley from New York City to Hudson Falls, I've been looking at and following many of the excellent routes on the excellent  Roberts guide to cycling the Hudson. I combine them with the local Jimapco maps for each county, which are big enough to follow by bicycle easily. Yesterday though my luck ran out as I'm now beyond Roberts help and suddenly the garages don't have Jimapco maps anymore.

Yesterday, I left Ghent, where I've had a lovely week with our friends Richard and Mimi Beaven, and headed up the leafy lanes and huge green landscapes south east of Albany. Albany is an odd place, reminded me a little of Cardiff, a familiar town scatteried around the feet of huge grand government buildings. A nice river side ride north out of town towards Troy, a sprawling urban town.

Beyond Troy and I found the river again. The river at this point is of fairly normal river proportions rather than the vast gulf it has seemed so far. Today I'm headed up to Hudson falls, the most northerly part of my ride, then headed back down the river and back to Hudson tomorrow.

The river north of Albany, suddenly looking of domestic proportions

Accord and the Chatham Brewing

Thought it about time to put some images up. They are all from around Accord, NY except the one of Matt mashing the brew at Chatham Brewing. The bottom image is from the Hudson Valley Seed Library in Accord (more of which later)

The North West Passage and more adventures up the Hudson Valley by bicycle

I had slunk back to Brooklyn for the night, primarily to pick up a tent and card readers, but also because I didn't have to think about finding somewhere for the night.

I took the Poughkeepsie train back to Garrison (where I had left my journey the night before) from Grand Central, which is one of the finest buildings. The title above the entrance to platform 29 says 'North West Passage'. If anything smacks of of adventure, that does. I did though discover later that it means the north west passage of Grand Central itself and nothing to do with direction, or with adventure for that matter.

After struggling through twenty miles of wet grey peddalling after getting back to Garrison I found a motel in Marlboro, and watched National Lampoon's Vacation on TV which seemed a pretty good combo.

Back on the trail the following day I got to Poughkeepsie (pronounced P'kipsie) and crossed the beautiful Footbridge over the Hudson (the longest pedestrian footbridge in the world) and spent an hour or two on watching the beautiful Mystic Whaler gracefully sail under the bridge. The Mystic Whaler is a schooner hired for the summer by Clearwater, the environmental organisation started by Pete Seeger to highlight the campaign to clean up and stop polluting the Hudson.

Later that day after recrossing the bridge I encountered the  long and arduous climb up Mohonk Mountain Road (well at least for a 55 year old bloke at a heavily loaded touring bike). The decent was like a lovely fast affair with long sweeping bends, and as I stopped to check the map about twenty local club riders swept past.

I was headed for Accord and a combination of the man in the liquor store and a random man outside a gas station pointed me towards a B&B. The B&B turned out to be Tim and Beths place. I took a liking to Tim as soon as he emerged from his wooden house with big black dog and warm smile, he said I've got just the place and we walked over a field to his beautiful three bed yurt, with music on tap, kitchen, a great shower, big comfy bed. Everything you could imagine. He invited me over to the house for supper with his wife, Beth and told me of his life. Also about the deadly rattlers, black bears and mountain lions around. Suddenly the tent like yurt didn't seem like the heavenly place it was an hour before. Tim said 'just pay what you want for the yurt'. It was a pretty special place, I've never heard so much birdsong. And set me up for a couple of great days ahead.

Nyack, NY

 

The schooner, Mystic Whaler at Poughkeepsie from Walkway over the Hudson

 

Kinderhook farm, Ghent, NY

Ted the stone face carver

Day two
Piermont to Garrison

I took a route out of Nyack, a little town of painted houses, all very Hopper-esque into the State park and along a ten mile dirt track alongside the Hudson with woodland to my left, every now and then a little striped critter would run out and scamper back. Chipmunks I think they are (thanks Richard), about 10 inches long, stripey backs and long tail. I know that the woods are tick infested so I didn't fancy wandering far.

I met Ted, a great old boy, just after leaving the trail. Ted arrived in his car just as a spotted his painted wooden house surrounded by his amazing work. Ted tells his story much better than I ever could. He is one of those warm hearted people that you rarely meet, very modest about his work which he began nearly 30 years ago when he retired at 59.

I decided early on in the day, that I might make for Garrison on the east side of the river, crossing at Bear Mountain. I was missing my tent and reckon there is plenty of camping to be had. So decided to take a train back to New York and grab my stuff (inc the illusive card readers) and head back out to the trail in the morning. And ride back to Bear Mountain and up the west side of the river to Beacon.

As always, on the bike (well for me anyway) it never quite is possible to work out timing and I'm guessing it will be an afternoon and evening ride up to Newburgh and the walkway over to Beacon.

 

Untitled by nick_hand at Garmin Connect - Details.

Conversations on the Hudson: Day one

Day one 32 miles
DUMBO in Brooklyn to Pierpont.

Set off and got a bit lost coming off Manhattan Bridge trying to find the Joe Strummer wall. Asked directions from a nice old boy, a war veteran who  was stationed in a big town in the war (turned out it was Reading).

Some nice shouts from the many riders passed in the 32 miles from Brooklyn to Pierpont on the Hudson. Inc 'hard core' going up a big hill (from a rider going down, and I don't even think he was being sarcastic), which gave me a bit of a spur.

Turns out the ride out to Piermont where I was headed is 'the standard ride' for New Yorkers on a Sunday, and I can see why. The Greenway along the West side of Manhattan was rammed with riders and runners, aided by riders in green bibs who had completed the 5 boros tour of NYC, the biggest cycle event in America which allows 40,000 riders to cover a car free ride around the city, starting and finishing in Battery Park at the southern tip of the island.

Packing was the usual panic, what to pack, how heavy. The big dilemma was whether to go with camera gear (3-4 lenses) or camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, mat etc), I decided it was too much to go for both. I plumped for camera gear this time as it was a shorter ride and I couldn't see too much camping opportunity until Albany. 

I found a B&B first night not too far from Brooklyn in Piermont. It is run by a classic valleyite called Carolla. Who is a wellness and yoga teacher. Carolla kindly offered to run me into Piermont (2 miles away) to a nice Portuguese restaurant. Carolla joined me for supper and we got chatting to Karen and Dennis at the next table. Turned out Karen was also a 'Wellness' expert. And you can imagine that Carolla and Karen has lots to talk about with Dennis (a drummer) and I giving lots of nods at appropriate times. Then back to Riverview (probably not the last of those I'll stay in) for a quick catch up on the days footie and Giro results. The house, a beautiful slatted painted wood building, was once owned by Rex Harrison, who played Henry Higgins opposite Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

I read a nice piece about fishing in the Palisades on the Hudson by a man called William O Allison, who was born in 1849 and wrote this in 1913.

'Looking up at the small dilapidated abiding places along the Palisades in 1913, one could hardly help smiling when told how an ancestor refused to live in an isolated old house at Manhattanville (today the neighbourhood around West 125th street), because it was so lonely there. There were probably few places in this or any other county, where so good a living could be obtained with so little effort. The River, until became polluted, teemed with fish of every sort, and the shad fishing during some six weeks in the Spring was profitable enough to support a family for the year. At low tide, the soft clams could be dug, and the oysters beds on the west side of the river could be raked and tonged. It was a common thing, any still summer day, to observe a shark swimming near the surface. Porpoises were plentiful, and the huge sturgeon would call attention to his frolic by jumping his full length out of the water, and falling back. The catching of Shad was by using poles sunk into the deep water and mud across the tide. The poles of oak or hickory would be 45-50ft long. On each pole was a strong hoop, made of hickory sapling, with a stone fastened to it weighing perhaps 25 pounds. The nets were lifted every six hours, at the slackening of each tide, called the ebb lift and the flood lift. The best fishing was on the flood tide, as the shad were going up to fresh water to spawn and the great catches were when they had a full moon, and big flood tides. It was no uncommon thing for a boat to bring in 500 shad from one lift, and often take 1000 in 24 hours. The fishermen made an arrangement with a merchant in New York, to sell their fish, usually ro 1 cent a piece, and in the 1860s as low as six cents per shad. Sturgeon were an annoyance as they were so big they broke the nets. Besides striped bass, smelts and eels from from the salt water, there would be goldfish, sunfish, pike, pickerel, suckers, catfish, etc from the freshwater'.

Well that's it, tomorrow and hoping to get over the river to Mt Kisco to take a look at Woody Guthries archives and to meet Anna (his granddaughter).

I realised that though I had packed the big heavy New York lock (for the bike) I had left the key. Ho hum.

Setting out from the Joe Strummer mural in the East Village. It was used in the video for Redemption Song, and seemed a good starting point.



Untitled by nick_hand at Garmin Connect - Details.

Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie

The power of music is often combined with the power of the message, and so when the two collide in a song of struggle, of freedom or of right over wrong there is nothing more powerful.

And so it is the music of the Clash, Christy Moore, Billy Bragg, Woody Guthrie and early Bob Dylan that has helped shape and inform my passion for music, politics and change.

And so when I found myself in New York in the year of both the 100th anniversary of Woody Guthrie's birth and of the 10th year since the death of the great Joe Strummer, it seemed appropriate somehow that I mark it in some way. New York is where Woody lived in his later years  and his family run a foundation in his name nearby at Mount Kisco. Joe also spent a lot of time here (inc the 17 consecutive performances which became the Clash on Broadway in 1981). Strummer called himself Woody in the days before the Clash and would sometimes introduce Clash songs with "this is a folk song from England".

Two days ago Pete Seeger celebrated his 93rd birthday. Pete is a New Yorker. A man of quiet dignity, a folk singer of sound and consistant political, social and environmental credentials. He has sung and written great American folk songs of protest and hard times all his long life. Was a friend and travelling companion of Guthrie's. He stood up for his beliefs through the crazy political turmoil of the McCarthy era. It was Seeger's song My Rainbow Race that tens of thousands of Norwegian's sang as a song of unity in Oslo a week or so ago.

And so it was an amazing thing to see Pete Seeger on stage at a Guthrie celebration a couple of Sundays ago, up in the Hudson Valley at Tarrytown. Pete talked about his time with Woody, and this is a little of what he said.

"on comes this little short fellow with a cowboy hat, and he tells a few jokes and sings a song. He was on the stage for about 20 minutes and captured the crowd completely, when he came off, Alan Lomax went to see him and said, you have to come to Washington and record your songs. Well Woody went down there, and I tagged along . Well I must have seemed strange to him he said 'that guy Seeger is the strangest man I ever knew, he don't smoke, he don't drink, he don't chase girls'. However, I had a good ear and could accompany him in any song he played, I could hear a chord coming and I didn't play anything too fancy. So he let me tag along with him when he went out to Texas to visit his first wife. He wasn't a good family man. His first wife, Mary said 'we were just too young I was sixteen and he was nineteen' and he was always running away from home. But I learnt all sorts of things from him he told me 'Pete, if you want to make a living, you won't get rich, but you'll make a living, go into a bar and buy a nickel beer and drink it as slow as you can, have your banjo slung over your back, sooner or later someone will say, 'kid you gonna play that thing' don't be too eager say 'a little' and sip your beer. Then someone will say 'kid, I gotta quarter for you if you play a tune' and you swing it around and play your best song'. He also told me how to ride freight trains. I didn't learn very well because the first one I jumped off I broke my banjo".

At the same show Woody's granddaughter Anna read some great lines that he wrote. I didn't record them, but I found some words that he wrote that sum up the power of words and song in the fight against injustice.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. 

I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. 

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. 

And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.

There is a great mural, a memorial to Joe Strummer in the East Village, and my plan is to start a bicycle ride from there on Sunday and then head up the Hudson Valley for a few weeks and see who I can meet. A kind of 'conversations on the river'. I'd like to make the first stop at Mt Kisco and take a look at some of Woody's writings and draw some inspiration before heading up the valley.