Event type: Archive

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2025 2 - 4 PM Join us for a visit to Branchwater Farms with owners Robin Touchet and Kevin Pike and a tasting of their spirits. You may have seen their handsome bottles at the liquor store or farmers markets. Ever wonder how Branchwater Farms spirits—gin, whiskey, rye and brandies—are made? Join us for a visit with owners Robin Touchet and Kevin Pike on their Milan farm. We’ll have a chance to see the fields where the grain is grown (and possibly get a glimpse of their free-ranging ducks) before heading into the barn-turned-distillery. Robin and Kevin will tell us about their approach to regenerative farming, the animals they raise as part of that process, and the partnerships they’ve formed with other growers and farmers along the way. We’ll end with a tasting of Branchwater spirits and time for shopping in their farm store, which sells select local edibles, drinkables and home goods, some from the farm itself. Address provided upon registration, which is required. $25 donation suggested.

Join us on Wednesday, November 13 at 6:30pm for a screening of Food & Country and conversation with Ruth Reichl at Starr Cinema, Rhinebeck! After a modest start in the ‘70s, the beloved food writer and chef Ruth Reichl rose to the top of the culinary world with stints at the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Gourmet magazine. As the pandemic shut down thousands of restaurants, Reichl went nationwide to explore the precarious state of America’s small farmers and independent restaurants with director Laura Gabbert (City of Gold, No Impact Man). Food and Country is directed by Laura Gabbert and is 100 minutes long

The Gardening Roundtable is back! Our 2025 panelists, Kiera Faulkner-Jekos, Ashley Gammel and Mark Stonehill will offer up invaluable tips on how to grow vegetables, native plants and fruit trees. For more info on our expert trio, click on the photo at right.

Saturday, February 8, 2025 A midwinter celebration for gardeners! Along with a seed swap (bring some, share some, adopt some!), we'll have a station where you can sow seeds—including tasty greens and native flowers—in milk jugs which you can leave outdoors. They'll start growing when the time is right. Join us at Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff from 3:00-5:00pm.

Dirty Gaia was excited to partner with the Chancellor Livingston Elementary School PTSO electives program this fall to run an after school Garden Club! We got our hands dirty in the new school garden—growing and tasting fall veggies, sowing native seeds, enjoying a harvest celebration and having lots of fun along the way.

Walk and Restore the land with Winnakee Land Trust and Dirty Gaia this spring. Join us for a hands-on event at Vlei Marsh and learn the ins and outs of turning your lawn into a meadow!

Join us for a day of nurturing nature! We've joined with the Town and Village of Rhinebeck to put on a festival of earth-supporting activities at Thompson-Mazzarella (aka Starr) Park from 12-3 pm on April 27. Help spruce up the pollinator garden (gloves are a good idea), walk with a Winnakee Land Trust guide and learn how to spot (and tackle!) invasives. There will be demos of electric garden tools (blowers, trimmers), a herpetologist walk with a 6th grader who's something of an amphibian/reptile whisperer, seed-ball making with Sandy from Morton Library, and loads more stuff. It's free, btw! See you there.

The Edible Gardens Tour is back for another year! This time we’re expanding to include Rhinecliff and Rhinebeck gardens that feed pollinators as well as humans. Along with sky-high trellises dangling with gourds, an outdoor room sided with corn stalks, an arrangement of raised beds with everything from zukes and cukes to tomatoes and lettuces, we’re inviting you to spaces with native plantings of grasses, shrubs and flowers designed to attract all sorts of creatures, winged and otherwise, whose daily routines are essential to our wellbeing and that of the earth. In short, we’re celebrating gardens that feed people, pollinators and the soul. The tour is free and self-guided. Registration is required to receive a map of participating gardens.

Phragmites don't belong in our ecosystem—they're running amok and displacing native cattails in our region—but their fibers make ideal weaving material. In this basketweaving workshop we'll be upcycling invasives in support of the environment! Melissa Hewitt and Mirabai Trent of Circle Creative Collective, expert weavers, will lead this workshop in which we'll learn coil weaving techniques that will serve as a basis for making more baskets for years to come. Great for gifts and to use at home as catchalls and decorative accents. We’ll meet at Ferncliff Forest in Rhinebeck. The cost of the workshop is $40. All materials will be provided.

Join us for a screening of Common Ground at Upstate Film's Starr Cinema in Rhinebeck. A follow up to the eco-blockbuster Kiss the Ground, this updated doc shows how we can turn the tide on climate change—it's all about the dirt! Common Ground delves into the connection between regenerative farming, public health and politics, and features a stellar cast, including Laura Dern, Woody Harrelson, Jason Momoa and Rosario Dawson. Suzanne Kelly, owner and grower at Green Owl Farm in Rhinebeck (you may know her from the Farmers Market) will host a Q and A after the film. Tickets are free, but please register.