do you know where your water comes from?

Did I ever tell you that much of New York City's water comes from the Catskills? It gets there via gravity--basically just rolls downhill. No massive pumps or filtration. It starts with rain and snowmelt.

The water from our waterfall goes into the creek and continues downhill to the Pepacton Reservoir, and from there 130 miles to the city via aqueducts, tunnels and pipes.

 There are all kinds of restrictions on land use, to keep the water pure. New York State and City have bought a lot of the land that wasn't already part of the wilderness park.

See how clear the water is? Our own water comes from a well.

Villages were flooded in order to build two of the reservoirs. You can imagine how difficult and controversial that was. Here is an excerpt from the documentary "Deep Water" that gives a flavor of the history of that massive endeavor. 

As I write this I realize I have no idea where my Massachusetts water comes from, even though I have lived here almost 7 years! I am leaving soon for a 4-day weekend in the Catskills. The Pakatakan Farmers's Market (which I wrote about here) will be open and I hope to get a waffle there.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Jen

can you say Pakatakan?

At my house we just say, going to the farmers market and leave out the Pakatakan part of it. For years, when I did try, I said Patatakan. My eyes refused to acknowledge that first k.

Many folks call it going to the round barn, which is pictured above. Inside the barn you will find locally made cheese, pies, bread, jewelry, honey, syrup & more.

In the shed are plants, crafts, baked goods, and most important, 

The Waffle People.

I have never been a lover of waffles--never ordered them in a restaurant, never made them. However, there have been weekends when I was waffling about whether I wanted to make the 4-hour drive from Massachusetts to New York and the promise of Saturday morning breakfast from The Waffle People put me the road. They are that good--there's a special slightly burnt carmelized pearl sugar trick that makes them better than all other waffles. And I have them with whipped cream, something else I never consume, and a delicious strawberry orange juice. The Waffle People are a lovely family and one of their sons makes the best fudge sauce in the world. You can order Slickpotte all natural fudge sauce here. It makes a nice gift or you can just eat it all yourself and have fun saying Slickpotte.

It's not only about the waffles of course. There is much delicious produce,

buddhapesto,

and other local delights.

It's taking forever for pictures to upload, so that's it for today. Our internet here in the Catskills is very slow (of course we didn't have internet until 2 years ago) so I am reading some of your posts without seeing all the pictures. What else? I spent a ridiculously long time watching a caterpillar scootch along--it was cute and fuzzy and very serious. Or maybe intent. Like he had somewhere to go, and nobody was getting in its way.  I haven't sold any canoe pictures but I did sell the table I wrote about a couple posts ago, which is good cause I gotta pay the rent somehow. And we're having big old thunderstorms.

Wish you were here!