Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

Little Turkey, looking exactly like the foilage around it. When I saw Mother Turkey and litter crossing the road I stopped the truck and got out to snap a photo - interestingly, Mother Turkey started making all sorts of racket and cackles which I initially thought was an alert to 'get the hang out of here', but what it really meant was for all the 9 chicks to 'freeze', and not to move - which was extremely effective technique since you could barly distinquish them from the surrounding pine needles, leaves, acorns, ferns and branches.

I was in the Narrowsburg area so I thought I would stop by Tusten Farms Lane, the site of our first 3 home project, started in 2003 and finished in September 2004. Heres a good pic of Farm 1, holding her age pretty well. This house was the inspiration for the entire business - modeled after a falling down farmhouse in Fremont Center.

And then here, down the lane a bit, is Farmhouse #2, actually the first one that went into contract. Tremendously exciting design, all about simplicity, on a nice 6 acre plot with a huge lake out front.

And then Farmhouse #3 - really classic house, sitting back lazily on 7+ acres. All of these houses were surrounded by a few hundred acres of protected land.

Mother Goose, and her teenage flock, heading out to the pond to escape the guy with the camera.

And over Father's Day, my bro, Dad and wife and 3 of my bro's 4 children came up to visit. Here's Sarah and Marcus playing some sort of make-believe game on the porch.

And here's the oldest, Josh, keeping an eye on his brother and sister while practicing up for a future one on one soccer match against Uncle Chuck.

And here's my Dad and Lisa, talking loudly while everyone was trying to watch TV. Note the teenager on the far end of the couch.

and Uncle Chuck, explaining the finer details of the "Bee Movie" to little Sarah.

It's definitely official. I have gained some weight - I'm calling it sympathy pregnancy weight, and could be just a simple 'taking one for the team' during Lisa's runup to birth.

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"...You're sick of hangin around and you'd like to travel;
Get tired of travelin and you want to settle down.
I guess they cant revoke your soul for tryin,
Get out of the door and light out and look all around.

Sometimes the lights all shinin on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me,
what a long, strange trip its been."

Grateful Dead lyrics from an album long past. Friday nights on WJFF, our local independent hydro-powered cool ass radio station has the 'Dead Hour' every Friday night around summer sundown (it's actually an hour and a half). They also have a once a year 24 hour Dylan bash on his birthday. www.wjffradio.org.

Here's cottage 8, moving right along. The outside is just ready to pick up some steam - I wanted to try a new siding crew, and that meant waiting a bit. The inside is nearly done - pictures forthcoming.

Cottage 7 has passed some serious milestones - the inside is trimmed and painted, and within a week we will be doing the floors. Had a site meeting with Pablo and Ana yesterday to discuss some details, but for the most part it's smooth sailing from here. The paint colors are incredibly perfect for the interior of this house. They will be living in the house by the end of August.

Hate to say - but this is about the 6 straight house we brought in on-budget, and ahead of schedule. What's unheard of (on time, on budget) is commonplace for us and our clients at this point. So when people wonder how Catskill Farms is doing it (www.thecatskillfarms.com), it's very easily explained - my team is a bunch of honest overachievers - from the surveyors and engineers to the carpenters, painters and tile men. They take our mission seriously - our mission being, simply, 'to make the country transition easy - to raise the bar of what is possible for those itching to build/live a getaway..' Not 'kinda easy', or 'kinda painless', but really, actually, easy. The Big Easy.

And Cottage 5 looks better and better, with a great paint color, a great columned aesthetic, landscaping and sod growing quickly, and most importantly, a homeowner's caring touch.

Once Catskill Farms is done, the fun has really just begun - making a house a home. Some families do it overnight, some do it over a few months, and some take even more.

In my mind, I pictured thousands, if not tens of thousands, of readers waiting anxiously for this long-awaited post (lisa thinks a baker's dozen, max, including family). Truth being, I have been without phone, cable, internet and even electric since Tuesday night when a quasi-twister came twisting through Bethel leaving quite a bit of devastation in its wake. It wasn't as if whole neighborhoods were flattened and all the mobile homes flying through the air (a true air traffic jam because of all the trailers in the county), but a lot of big trees down and enough electric lines down to cause to real hardship and inconvenience for a lot of people. Lisa, Juan, Amy, Amy's parents and myself were down in Barryville enjoying Taco Tuesday at Cedar Rapids campground and missed the storm of century in favor of bad mexican food (hard to do), but on our way back up 55 East we could tell something had just happened - it seemed like the morning after, - lots of leaves, branches, eerie colors and lingering winds. We got back to Chapin Estate and prayed as we pushed our gate opener, hoping the system was working off a backup system or generator or something. Luckily, it opened and Juan and Lisa high-fived. Trees were down though, and it was dark and raining hard. Within 100 yards on the private Chapin Trail Road leading into the project, a tree was down, blocking any hope of getting by this tree which was tangled in electric wires, phone wires, and cable wires. We got out of the car to check it out, - do we try and pass, or do we not and where do we go for the night? At this point we weren't sure the extent of the damage throughout the county. About that time a big Hummer - yes some people I guess still drive hummers - arrived with Steve Dubrovsky and Mike Watkins, owners of the Chapin Estate. Oddly, they pulled up to the trees, obviously decided not to chance it, and left quickly without a word into the darkness, leaving me and my pregnant wife wondering the best course of action. So we ended up driving over to Amy's house and her barn and breakfast, and spending the night there. Even 15 miles away, still no electric - meaning no fan and it was still hot hot hot. Interestingly, it wasn't too bad being off the grid.

Big tree with big branch broken off. Lots of 'b' s in that sentence - illiteration I think they call it.

Some trees were broken in half, other were twisted out of the ground whole.

The thing about trees is that to remove them are expensive, especially if a homeowner pays a retail weekender price. You have to cut up the tree, haul out the wood, get rid of the stump (one stump and roots can fill an entire truck), and then you have to fill the big hole the tree was rooted in. The eye of the storm seem to have gone right through Lot 45, my old house at Chapin Estate and lots of trees were done on this property. The homeowners called their insurance company and they said, with a straight face, 'did the trees fall on the house? No, well you live in the woods right? Trees fall in the woods right?" Classic - I wish I could say such things to my customers.

Here is a picture below of the electrical lines dangling dangerously. I guess it wasn't that dangerous since Chapin Estate founder offered no guidance just after the storm. Hey, what's a little electricity pulsing through the ground and trees.

It was a bit refreshing to be disconnected from email, phones, fax and electric - although no electric means no water, no refrigerator, no air conditioning. I was using my cell phone a lot and had to charge it up in my truck - so not only am I definitely going to exceed my minutes, but I was spending $4.20 a gallon to charge my phone. We had to pay some bills on Thursday and couldn't access our accounting software to see who we owed what - so we decided to hand write the checks but this entailed a calculator not run on electric so we located a solar calculator but then it was too dark in the house for it to work so Deborah the book-keeper had to keep running outside into the sunshine everytime she needed to calculate something.

The one thing we had going for us was the fact that summer was in full swing meaning it stayed light late. No news, no email, no tv. At least we had some scotch to pass the time. Or, as Lisa offered, at least we had each other. She's sweet like dat.

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This weekend was lots of non-work related fun - and boy was it hot. I guess it was hot everywhere, but you especially notice it up here because usually the nights are so cool. This part of the Catskills, the Sullivan County, lower foothills of the Catskills, region can get hot, but usually the nights cool it down - we can easily see swings from 45 degrees on a June Morning to 90 degrees in the afternoon, back to 45 degrees again. But mid-90's in early June is a bit unexpected, to be sure.

Lisa's pregnant and probably the 2 most common reactions we get to said situation is 'sleep now' and 'oooh, you have to carry through the summer'. We really don't know the true meaning of either of these comments but i'm sure the understanding is imminent.

My customers and clients come to the Catskills for fun, and over the last 4 years one thing I have truely lacked is the time for some unadulterated fun. Don't get me wrong, I like fun and leisure as much as the next guy - in fact, if you can't enjoy some leisure what's the point of all the hard work. I think that's one of the things that drives my company is the pleasure we as a team get from seeing our homeowners get to enjoy their life's accomplishments - a country house, a truck, couple of dogs, a garden, some peace and quiet. It's not like these are grandiose or immodest aspirations - but they do mark a certain place and station in life. A marker of progress when you can take a break and take it all in.

Anyway, Saturday marked the opening of the Woodstock Museum in Bethel NY. For those not familar, Bethel NY (Sullivan County) was the default location of the 1969 concert after the town of Woodstock denied the concert permits at the last minute - so everyone came a little more northwest and half a million people landed in this nowhere's ville.

We all know the rest of the story and legend and about 4 yrs ago the local golden boy Alan Gerry who made his billions in cable tv and selling his life's work to Time Warner dreamed up and ponied up for an outdoor amphitheater on the exact site of the 1969 concert - so you have people like Neil Young coming back 40 years later to play on the same stage. Pretty cool, and very beautifully done.

Now, Mr Gerry has opened up a very well-done musuem dedicated to the memory of the turbulent 1960s. The opening day was Saturday.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-06-06-voa47.cfm

To all you sophisticates, these little accomplishments may not seem that impressive, but to anyone who lives here and has seen a lot of dreams come and go, to see a big project get done well, on time, and attractively is terribly exciting. Sullivan County doesn't have many big wins these days.

And then on Sunday, I was invited to the Swan Lake Golf Club for a round of golf with 2 executives with the local bank, The First National Bank of Jeffersonville, and my attorney. It was what they call 'better ball' where a team of 4 plays as a team, using the 'best ball' of each shot.

What has been neat about living up here in the sticks is the return to simplicity - if I have a problem I can call the bank president and he knows who I am - in fact, this bank was the financing source that got the whole show started - they gave me my first $100k I didn't qualify for, and have followed (or sometimes led) the way upwards ever since.

I have often said I would not have been able to build this business as quickly or as solidly if not for the ability to sit down with a small bank and explain some of the reasons why the scary numbers on the finanical data I was submitting while asking for my credit line to triple was not the whole story. Very Frank Capra-esque, to be sure.



Sunday was also the big day for the Callicoon Tractor Parade - an event where all the area tractors drive to downtown Callicoon and then one by one drive by the large crowed of on-lookers. Tractors of all shapes, sizes, ages, makes and models (and the same could be said for the crowd.



Here's pic of owner of Cottage 5 playing with a baby deer he found near his new home -

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