News stories tagged with "pierrepont"

(02/01/12) Root cellars were an essential part of nearly every home a hundred years ago. And along with an increase in the number of people growing their own food is the return to the root cellar. More than a basement, it's the cousin to canning and freezing and another way of preserving the harvest into the winter months. A couple of winters ago, Todd Moe visited Winnie and Rob Sachno's root cellar on their St. Lawrence County farm for a closer look at a simpler way of storing food.

(10/25/11) The late Roger Huntley was a lot of things: auctioneer, farmer, pillar of the Pierrepont-Crary Mills community. He was also a knowledgeable collector of historic farm equipment, and he liked to share his enthusiasm.

A few years ago, Huntley's neighbor, David Sommerstein, got a call that Roger and his wife Ann had brought out their early-1900s mechanical corn harvester to make corn bundles for Halloween with their granddaughters. Here's David's heard Up North from October 2007.

(03/16/11) With warm, sunny days and cold nights, this week is the first serious sap run of the maple syrup season.

Yesterday, Todd Moe spoke with St. Lawrence County Maple Association president Hugh Newton. He said people who visit his sugar shanty still want to see the icon of sweetness - those metal gray buckets hanging on maple tree trunks.

"So I strategically place 'em," Newton says, "so if you're standing in the right spot, you get a picture of the buckets and it looks like the whole woods is done in buckets."

Look deeper into the woods, though, and you'll see the equipment the modern maple syrup producer relies on - plastic piping that gravity feeds sap into collection tanks, and a vacuum pump that help suck more sap out of a tree.

David Sommerstein recently went out into the spring woods in Pierrepont as maple syrup producer Dillon Huntley was hooking up a vacuum pump for the first time. He sent this Heard Up North.

(05/24/10) Town road crews are out in force across the North Country, getting ready to fix and repave local roads. Many are holding off on bigger projects because they still don't know how much money they'll be getting from Albany. So they're working on smaller things. David Sommerstein caught up with a crew digging a ditch with a backhoe in Pierrepont for today's Heard Up North.

(06/11/08) Downed tree limbs littered the Orebed Rd. and nearby yards in Pierrepont yesterday. The powerful storm tore branches from century maples at Helen Hutchinson's home. She was aiding her hospice patient in Parishville when the storm struck.

(10/08/07) Here's a family tradition that combines the harvest and Halloween seasons. Roger and Ann Huntley of Pierrepont own a mechanical corn harvester from the early 1900s, and it still works. They brought their granddaughters out to the cornfield to make corn bundles for Halloween decorations, and for today's Heard Up North.

(08/29/07) Shirley Winters was charged yesterday with murdering a nearly 2-year-old North Country boy whose body was found in a bathtub last November. Martha Foley has more.

(06/26/07) The one-room schoohouse used to be a common sight in the North Country. Before school centralization around 60 years ago, these schoolhouses could be seen every couple of miles, since most students had to walk to school. While many of these buildings are now gone or in disrepair, one schoolhouse in Pierrepont still serves the surrounding community. Today NCPR and TAUNY, Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, continue our look at some very special places in the North Country. Joel Hurd and Varick Chittenden visited the Cooks Corners Schoolhouse on a sunny June day when fourth graders from Colton-Pierrepont Central School were playing roles of students in the late 19th century.

(11/15/06) Rural living has its special moments. Sometimes the evening's entertainment just walks right in. Sometimes on four legs. As in cows. Then you get to know your neighbors better, explore the countryside, and even learn new skills.
David Sommerstein and his wife were making a late dinner one night last summer. Just as dusk was quickly fading to dark, two big heifers wandered in to enjoy the fresh, tender lawn. David and Lisa figured they knew where these cows were supposed to be, so they called the neighbors -- and the round-up began.

(11/08/06) It's a rare night in rural northern New York when so many people travel into town as they do on Election night. Local fire departments and VFWs figured it was a good chance to raise some money. Hence, the election night supper. David Sommerstein asked diners at the Pierrepont fire department chicken and biscuit dinner about the war in Iraq and other issues that affected their vote.