Today, you’ll find vineyards all over New England. Take a drive along the southern coasts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut in October and, assuming the hard frosts haven’t hit too early, you’ll see glorious golden foliage blanketing the long, straight rows of vines.
Ten years have passed, and still I remember the sensation of floating above the Pioneer Valley, as if tethered to a hawk. Hot-air ballooning is a dawn-and-dusk sport, when the air temperature is right for launching. In the late-afternoon light, we rose above the Connecticut River, just outside Northampton, Massachusetts. Within moments, our balloonist, Paul […]
The creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts came with a cost: The sites of four communities in the Swift River Valley were drowned out of existence when it was built in the 1930s. In their place came two huge earthen dams and a new body of fresh drinking water for metro-Boston residents: a […]
Paul and Jo-Ann Desrochers grow vegetables, peaches, plums, and nectarines, but they have a special love of heirloom apples–nearly 90 varieties, all grown without pesticides. You’ll find ‘Westfield Seek-No-Further’ (a Massachusetts native), ‘Newtown Pippin’, and the wondrous ‘Hidden Rose’, whose bland green-brown skin gives way to bright fuchsia flesh that tastes of raspberries. Open Saturday […]
‘Ashmead’s Kernel’, ‘Roxbury Russet’, ‘Belle de Boskoop’, ‘Pink Pearl’, ‘Winter Banana’ … The names of antique and rare apple varieties are part poetry, part history lesson. Many go back centuries, some as far as the Renaissance. The tiny ‘Lady’ apple, also known as the ‘Pomme d’Api’, was first recorded under that name in 1628, but […]
Photo Credit: Library of Congress The fast way to reach the Berkshires from the east is to hop on the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90) and set your cruise control to 65, or 70 if you want to test the five-miles-over rule. Or you can drive through history–slowly, windows open, stopping here and there, taking photos, drinking […]
When Ron Morin wakes up in the morning, he often has the menu for that night’s dinner already set. He dreams his recipes and then sets out to create the evening’s meal–maybe shiitake mushrooms and eggplant in Chinese brown sauce, or haddock poached in curried almond milk. Ron and his wife, Lisa Kaplan, live in […]
Jud’s New England Journal For September 2012 Welcome to the September 2012 edition of Jud’s New England Journal, the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, the Editor-in-Chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, N.H About Our Hard Cider – And, Yes, Our Hard Tea, Too It’s difficult for outsiders to believe how […]
Yankee’s Top Summer Events from the May/June 2012 issue featured a late August performance by Herrmanns’ Royal Lipizzan Stallions on the grounds of historic Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut. That sounded like reason enough for a day trip, but my husband and I discovered much more. We began with Sunday brunch in Woodstock at The […]
7000 B.C. The first maples appear on the New England landscape. New Jersey tourists soon follow. September 1818 Mass.’ Topsfield Fair, now one of the oldest existing agricultural fairs in the country, opens. September 7-8, 1846 Henry David Thoreau, with friends, makes his first ascent of Maine’s Mount Katahdin. His finding: “Nature was here something […]
The Big E began in 1917, when Joshua L. Brooks opened an agricultural fair in West Springfield, Massachusetts, to the public. Farming in New England had diminished, and production costs were escalating. Brooks’s vision was to bring the six New England states together to improve agricultural techniques through demonstration and competition. For a dairy show […]
We call it “winter” squash, but that’s a misnomer. Like most vegetables, the butternuts, acorns, Hubbards, and delicatas piled on shelves at this time of year are planted and picked during the warm growing season we just eat them in the winter. They’re close cousins of the zucchini and pattypans overwhelming your garden in July […]
