Canton, PA, Jan 03, 2011 — Martha Foley's neighborhood has gathered to press cider for ...umm... a long time.
This year was a good one for apples in her part of the North Country. They were abundant, sweet, and juicy. That meant a record turnout for the annual pressing. People brought apples gathered from roadsides, abandoned pastures, and downtown backyards.

The hand-cranked press lives in an old milk house. It's a barrel-shaped contraption on iron legs, with wooden slatted sides. Whole apples are chopped in a belt-driven corn chopper nearby, then loaded in the press. The cranking starts, the squeeze gets tighter, and, eventually, the cider flows.

The whole process is a team effort, starting outside, with a bath for the apples. Here's the Heard Up North.  Go to full article

Nov 05, 2010 — Roger Huntley died this week at age 82. He was the sixth generation of his family to work their 300-acre dairy farm in the St. Lawrence County Town of Pierrepont. He was a fixture in his local hamlet of Crary Mills: active in the commmunity center located in the old Grange Hall, and as the proprietor, with his wife, Ann, of the Crary Mills "Mighty Mall."

But over the years and throughout the region he was best known as an auctioneer, a trade he took up in the late 1950s. Traditional Arts of Upstate New York named Roger to its honor roll of North Country Masters in 2000.

We profiled him in May of that year, when he was busy conducting the premier old-time sales of the northern Adirondack foothills and St. Lawrence Valley. Here's that profile, produced by Joel Hurd.  Go to full article

Tupper Lake, NY, Apr 06, 2004 — More than a hundred years ago when great camps were being built for families like the Rockefellers and the Durants, many of the furnishings were designed to bring the woods indoors. Chairs, tables, dressers and beds featured tree branches and limbs in their construction and twigs and bark were applied decoratively to the outside surfaces. The style was known as rustic or Adirondack. Today, prized antique pieces are displayed at museums and in lodges, where visitors are inspired to furnish their camps to evoke life in the woods. As Lamar Bliss reports, craftsmen like Tom Phillips of Tupper Lake now make a good living and practice an ancient art at the same time.  Go to full article

Sep 10, 2001 — Four North Country mainstays will be honored next week for the preservation of customs and traditions in the area. Among the recipients of this year's 9th annual Heritage Awards from Traditional Arts in Upstate New York is a storyteller of French-American tales and a builder of stone walls from Ogdensburg.  Go to full article

Westport, NY, Mar 13, 2000 — Edith E. Cutting--teacher, author and folklorist--was born in the Essex County town of Lewis, on a small family farm. Encouraged by her college mentor, she interviewed her friends and families and collected examples of their old customs, stories and sayings. Her first collection was published in 1944 as Lore of an Adirondack County.  Go to full article