The Magazine of the Mountains since 1969
Chicken riggies—mouthfuls of chicken, sweet and hot peppers, onions and rigatoni smothered in a white-wine marinara—is an upstate favorite born in Utica’s deep-rooted Italian community. Start your own love affair with the dish at Frankie’s Taste of Italy, in Old Forge, where owners Frankie and Tina Zammiello—now joined by their son, Julian—serve up meals inspired by their family’s Sunday feasts.
In the early 1800s, Reuben and Phoebe Davis carved out a homestead deep in the Adirondack wilderness. Their first child, Elisha, died at four years old, in 1819. Then Reuben Jr. died at age three, in 1825; Joseph, a couple of years later, at two; Nathrum in another few years, age one. We know only this about the Davis family from the stones of a tiny cemetery embedded in woods on a dirt section of the Old Northwest Bay Road, the first road to penetrate through the Adirondacks, where life held death in a cold, tight hug.
etirees live,” said Lorraine Lambiase, a short, 62-year-old farmer wearing barn boots and a black Nettle Meadow T-shirt.
“Why Jersey Shore?” I asked.
“I’m originally from Hoboken.”
The rust red barn, built for draft horses in 1903, is the second-oldest structure at Nettle Meadow Goat Farm and Cheese Company, in the town of Thurman in western Warren County and a world away from North Jersey. The property dates to the late 18th century, when the woodland was first cleared for farming in a wilderness area defined by Crane Mountain and the boulder-strewn tributaries of the Hudson River. Leading into this glen from Route 8, houses visible from the winding road sat next to stacks of firewood and pickup trucks plastered with NRA bumper stickers. Chain-saw black bears squatted on lawns. Maple sugar houses and a turkey farm lay over the next hill. “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, faded Trump slogans, VFW halls festooned with true blue bunting—the southern Adirondacks wearing politics on its sleeve. An odd place, perhaps, to find two aging pacifists who have “Lady Liberty is Crying, End the Madness, Stop the Hate” scrawled on the back windshield of their van.
Three-year-old Michael Hart II loves mud puddles, the Power Rangers and playing soccer—things most kids his age embrace. But Michael’s also undergone two heart surgeries, has low muscle tone, severe astigmatism in both eyes, hearing loss in both ears and, because of his frustration at not being able to communicate, throws fits so epic, nothing—nothing—soothes him, says his mom, Jessica Smith.
Down Hadley way, past Lake Luzerne, through the witchy shade of big white pines, beyond the motels and cottages dotting Great Sacandaga Lake, past the ziplines, tourist traps and raft-laden school buses, up a small dirt drive off South Shore Road, there’s a kind of Shangri-la where you’ll find Jim Schreiner, rustic-furniture maker.
The Wildlife Issue! A peek inside the secret lives of Adirondack moose by Jeff Nadler, wildlife portraits by Pamela Underhill Karaz, an opossum search party led by best-selling author Kristin Kimball, plus loons, turtles, turkeys, chipmunks, coyotes and more.
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