The Milton Grange will be hosting a free backyard chicken workshop on February 21 from 9-noon at the Milton Community Center 310 Northline Road in the town of Milton.
Please call 885-6906 to register.
Facebook event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/713201082127964/
It’s that time again. This year the Milton Grange #685 is teaming up with the Greenfield Grange #807 to host another Wine and Cheese Tasting event at the Saratoga Winery.
Once again, our friends at Willow Marsh Farm and Saratoga Crackers are coming with their most excellent cheese and crackers.
You can click on the poster at left for a large version.
Details:
Cyndi and Shana
Thanks to everyone who came out a couple of weeks ago to our/Greenfield Grange’s Benefit event to help out farmers in the Schoharie Valley. It’s just amazing to see such an outpouring of support for the region’s farmers.
Drumroll please…
The final number is: $2024.34 !(Full Disclosure: Revised down $30 as some previously hidden expenses popped up) This is a fantastic number, and in all honesty, we could have never gotten to that number without the generous donations made by The Saratoga Winery, Willow Marsh Farm and Saratoga Crackers. We hope you patronize these excellent local businesses after sampling what they have to offer.
A representative from Schoharie County Community Action Program (SCCAP) will be attending our next pancake breakfast meeting on December 10th to accept the check. As always, the public is welcome. The breakfast begins at 8am on December 10th at the Old Stone Church, Milton.
Again, a sincere thank you to all that came out. We hope to have this type of fundraiser become an annual event for both Granges, though we do not want to see the likes of Irene and Lee again for a long, long time. Whatever the cause, we hope to see you next year.
Click on image for full size version
The Milton Grange #685 in collaboration with the Greenfield Grange #807 will be hosting a Wine Tasting at the Saratoga Winery on Saturday November 12th at 7pm to benefit the Schoharie County Community Action Program in the wake of Irene and Lee . The funds will be earmarked for farm recovery.
We will have cheese from Willow Marsh Farm and Crackers from Saratoga Crackers. If you haven’t tried either of these, then you don’t know what you’re missing. Amazing stuff.
We hope to see a lot of you there!
You can contact Shana at 518-744-3834 or via email at gfldgrange807@hotmail.com to purchase tickets. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door.
Greetings. Sundae on the Farm is always a special and amazingly fun event that the Milton Grange participates in every year. It always falls on Father’s Day, and is a great time for families to come out and see the operations of one of our Saratoga County farms.
This year the event was held at Clear Echo Farm in Northumberland and the weather could not have been better. The event seems to get better every year with respect to organization and layout. Clear Echo’s layout definitely lent itself well to the event.
Milton Grange #685 was proud to be raffling off both our usual basket as well as the chicken coop that we built for last year’s Saratoga County Fair exhibit. When you build something like that, you never know what kind of interest you’ll get. We knew that someone would win it, but we didn’t know that we would get as many entries for it as we did. This is exciting for a lot of reasons. First, it shows that there are people out there that want to make a closer connection with the food that they eat. It’s great to see that connection being made. I don’t know if raffling a chicken coop would have been as much of a success 5 years ago.
Thanks to all who came out and said hi. We hope to see you all next year.
Greetings. The Milton Grange #685 will be attending Sundae on the Farm at Clear Echo Farm in Schuylerville, NY. We will be raffling off a basket full of wonderful things provided by grange members as well as the chicken tractor pictured at left. This coop was built by grange members as a part of our 2010 Blue Ribbon Saratoga County Fair exhibit. It’s designed for 2-3 chickens and designed to be moved around a yard. It will need a few things (a feeding and watering system and winterization if you intend to overwinter your birds), but it’s a good small scale starter coop. We encourage you to check your local laws to see if you’re allowed to keep chickens in your town/village/city.
We’ll have two buckets, so you can choose which prize you want to try and win. We hope to see you out at this amazing event.
Our monthly breakfast meeting is this coming Saturday the 11th of June at 8am at the Old Stone Church.
The cost for breakfast is $5 and is open to the public.
Our speaker will be Todd Simkus from the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce.
Members should bring items for the raffle basket that we’ll be giving away at Sundae on the Farm.
Our monthly meeting/breakfast is Saturday the 14th of May at 8am at the Old Stone Church.
The cost for breakfast is $5 and is open to the public.
Our speaker will be Joe Mendez. He will be speaking to us about returning woman veterans and the issues that they are facing as they return from overseas.
We’ll be discussing many of the upcoming activities that we have coming up this spring and summer including the Plant Sale, Sundae on the Farm, and the Saratoga County Fair Booth.
Hope to see you there.
Just a quick reminder that the Milton Grange will be holding it’s annual Garage Sale, this Saturday April 2nd from 8am – 3pm at 644 Rock City Road in Ballston Spa.
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Signs will be posted around the area to direct you to the sale.
All proceeds from the sale go to helping purchase vegetable plants for the Project Head Start families.
Items for sale will include household goods, toys, tools , antiques, fabrics, decorations, sporting goods, novelty items, books, etc. There will not be any clothing or electronics at this sale.
This year I was privileged to serve on the fair exhibit committee with our President, Rob Pastore, as well as Cynthia Pastore and Carl and Mary Engelhardt. Our topic this year was backyard chickens. There’s a burgeoning movement in urban and suburban areas of people keeping chickens for fresh eggs, pest control, and in some cases, meat, as evidenced by sites like Backyard Chickens and Urban Chickens. People raising their own birds can only go to strengthen ties and understanding between people from rural and urban backgrounds, so it seemed to be a good exhibit to take on.
Rob, Carl and myself spent several evenings in the weeks leading up to the fair designing and building a chicken coop (pictured below). We started with a picture of a coop gleaned from the internet and started building. As a side note, the coop we built will be auctioned off next year at Sundae on the Farm.
I’ll let the images below speak for themselves. This was our Blue Ribbon exhibit. Click on the pictures for bigger versions.
