All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
The video stories were getting swamped by all the community meetings so I moved them to their own special location. Please go up to the top menu and click COMMUNITY MEETINGS. Enjoy!
Go to the video story →
Here in northeast Dutchess County, it was dairy farms and we were the Milk Bottle of New York City. But the dairy farms closed and different animals were brought to graze our pastures — horses. Now we’re Horse Central. And along with the new animals came new people and traditions. And new trades. One of [...]
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
They said it would be sold on the court house steps. They were not exaggerating. Just not the front steps, the back ones. I had to see it with my own eyes. If you want to see what a foreclosure auction of a community center and library building looks like, take a look: The [...]
Go to the video story →
It’s the tradition. Every year, at 3PM the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Pine Plains decorates itself with Christmas Lights. And then, at 5, just when it is dark, Pine Plains becomes the Center of the Universe…. well, at least the Northeastern Dutchess County part of the universe. Neighboring fire companies, ambulance corps, farms, businesses, organizations, they [...]
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
Every year, come Halloween, Jack O’ Lanterns, dozens of them, show up and glow on the bridge at Patchin Mills. This is the story behind them. If you have a good connection, enjoy the show full screen in HD! The music is the Symphonie Fantastique, the fifth movement with the Dies Irae theme, conducted by [...]
Go to the video story →
Seems like they had everything! Particularly, a large crowd on a sunny October day at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
A fun way to get some fresh air, some good food, and get to know a local farmer — visit a local farm! Here, at Rocky Reef Farm, the public is welcome to enjoy the bounty of the Hudson Valley. There are many local farms in our area to visit and Pine Plains Views will [...]
Go to the video story →
Every year the Stissing Mountain High School chapter of the Future Farmers of America runs an ag fair. I’ve filmed different parts of it before, but this year I’ve pretty much stuck to the tractor pulls and the barn where kids show cows. Also, this year a new agricultural business introduced itself to the community: [...]
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
After a four year run, the Wild Hive Farm, Store & Café Bakery closed. I made this film on its last night to preserve how its customers celebrated its contribution to the community. I could ramble on about how much this place meant to me, but I think the film shows it. Every meal was [...]
Go to the video story →
Wheels of Time, the shop of dreams and fond memories. Whether you prefer stories about people over cars or cars over people, you can’t go wrong here! See for yourself! A Pine Plains treasure.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
It finally had to happen! This much-beloved resort where friendships and even families were formed closed down a few years ago. The regulars hoped that somehow it would re-open and they could get their memories back. I hate to be the bearer of bad news…
Go to the video story →
If this looks as if a man is trying to disappear into that hole in the brush, well, that was the whole idea. It leads to where a huge moonshine operation had been hidden since The Prohibition in a warren of underground rooms and tunnels. I’ve heard about this for years and was finally able to take a tour. Come on along.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
It’s great when a community pulls together for a cause. In this case it was pulling pork as a fund-raiser for the local historical society. Two hundred tickets were sold and late-comers had to be turned away. Perhaps some vegetarians had to look away…
Go to the video story →
Right here in Pine Plains! A fleet (what do you call a flock of Porsches, anyway?) of all vintages of Porsches as the Hudson Valley Chapter of the Porsche Club of America landed on our own John Corson’s lawn to visit his garage.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
Although it is a race course, it really is a park where the public can watch from under the trees and on the hills without the confines of grandstands. They can meet the drivers, crews, all the people who put the cars on the track.
Go to the video story →
They’re always talking about what we import from China. Well, here’s what we export to back to them. WARNING: Not for the mechanically squeamish!
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
For those of us in Pine Plains who crave good Chinese food it means hitting the road. But we are fortunate that just up the road is a chef and caterer who will not only bring the food but can show us how to make it. This is an entertaining series about making Chinese dumplings. Another thing you can do in Pine Plains!
Go to the video story →
A great introduction to Pine Plains is the Memorial Day Parade. If they’re not actually in it, they’re watching it! This was in 2000. The rest of the world, but not the parade, has changed a lot since. See for yourself as it is in 2011.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
I often drove by an old building on the outskirts of Pine Plains and wondered about what it used to be. It was by a mill pond so I naturally assumed it was some kind of abandoned water mill. When I saw some activity going on around it (actually more underneath it) my curiousity got [...]
Go to the video story →
This is about a dairy farmer, Barry Chase, who is about to sell his herd of milking cows. I visited with him and his wife, Rosey, a few days before their herd leaves.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
The first triathalon of Pine Plains. The race itself was the shortest part of the story. It took months of planning, organizing, recruiting and training local residents to be part of something they had never even seen before.
Go to the video story →
Local folks who like to play bluegrass, they have been getting together on Wednesday nights for over 40 years. They never had a name for their group so I just call it The Wednesday Jam. When I came across them they had been playing in Pete and Cindy Howe’s kitchen where I took these videos.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
In 1939, Carolyn Howe got married. One of her wedding presents was a 16mm movie camera. She took pictures of life around her in Falls Village, Connecticut. These are absolutely amazing scenes of farm life and equipment of that time.
Go to the video story →
An old farmhouse was resting on a warped frame that could no longer support it. But this house is not going to be torn down. It will be restored after it is jacked up and moved onto a new foundation. Ever wonder how they jack up a whole house and move it? Well, see for yourself! It’s all revealed in this story.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
The farmers may be leaving their farms and the farmland, even if preserved, may be left only as viewscape. But a culture and tradition of agriculture remains. Each year the Agriculture Fair, put on by the Future Farmers of America in Pine Plains, grows as an area attraction.
Go to the video story →
WARNING: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME! We had this tree… well, up until recently it had been 3 trees, a triple crown, but when two of them came down in the field the third one was leaning more and more perilously over our backyard and… We had to call the Wallendas of Pine Plains.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
A video visit with Verne Tower, stone-cutter, as he re-creates an elaborate marble stoop for a historic mansion in Hudson, NY. While Verne may be doing wonderful restoration and preservation of historical buildings, he is also preserving skills and technology that are disappearing faster than the buildings he works on.
Go to the video story →
The 4- H Club dairy cow competition was a proud event for Pine Plains at the Dutchess County Fair. Gina Brooks and her brother, Patrick, showed two of her cows, a Brown Swiss and a Holstein, which she has been keeping in Barry Chase’s barn.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
Because it sets itself apart from the ordinary by striving to do things better and living up to its motto: Love Where You Live, it was able to invite its customers in the community to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
Go to the video story →
It’s often referred to as “that old house by the bank parking lot” by people who do not remember the name, Louis Graham/Brush House. I confess that I was, up until I started filming its restoration, one of them.
Go to the video story →
All Community Meetings videos can be found through the menu at the top, Community Meetings.
Field work — literally — when Vassar College students milked cows, fed turkeys, picked fruit, mucked stalls and wrote ethnographies as part of an anthropology course.
Go to the video story →
Once the world was flat then it became round. Now it is flat again… The high school cafeteria was filled with the sounds and sights of Chinese in a welcome to the delegation from High School #29 in Nanjing (China).
Go to the video story →
