BalletCollective returns to Millbrook for 12th summer residency
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Parker Whitehead-Bus
Parker Whitehead-Bus
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A cold mountain brook that enters one of the New York City reservoirs.
Patrick L. Sullivan
I remember as a callow youth of 12 being instructed by an impossibly ancient codger -- hell, he was probably 65 -- that a Leadwing Coachman wet fly, size 10-14, would produce on the Esopus when nothing else would. In the intervening half century I have put this proposition to the test and found it accurate.
What was different this year was the isos were flying around. Usually we see their casings on the rocks, but not the adult mayflies in the air.
Adult mayfly.Patrick L. Sullivan
The first night it was all browns in the 14-18 range. The second night it was all rainbows in the 10-14 range.
That was early in the trip. Three days in, things warmed up considerably, and without any mitigating rain.
So the range of options was limited, and the preferred time of day was just before dawn. Note I said “preferred.” The actual start time varied depending on how late my attorney, Thos., and I stayed up watching Fu Manchu movies.
I low-crawled up a mountain brook at dawn with a Tenkara rod and did okay with wild browns. On the scramble out I had a brief and alarming encounter with a descendant of the Hound of the Baskervilles, whose owner helpfully said “Don’t make any sudden moves.”
“Any chance of a leash here?” I said in what I hoped was a cheerful, non-threatening tone of voice.
So there’s that.
Gary Dodson alerted us that the Spot That Must Not Be Named was in play. This is a cold mountain brook that enters one of the New York City reservoirs and depending on how full the latter is, forms a channel of cold water that mixes in with the warmer reservoir water. If the timing is right, the angler can latch into some decent trout and whatever else has fins and an inquisitive nature.
So one morning, while the boys worked the big deep cold pool by the bridge, I made my way downstream, deploying the stream thermometer frequently to try and figure out the magic spot where trout would be comfortable enough to hang out and nosh.
I used a favorite tactic: a dry/dropper rig, with a Chubby Chernobyl as the top fly and de facto bobber, and a series of nymphs and wet flies on an 18-24 inch fluorocarbon tipper dropper, 4X or 5X, tied directly to the bend of the Chubby’s hook.
This worked immediately, with good browns in the 16-18 inch range hitting the nymphs and a Jerry Shillcock isonychia wet fly pattern.
Trout.Patrick L. Sullivan
In a nod to tradition, I used one of my late father’s Orvis Battenkill bamboo rods for the purpose. It is eight feet long in three sections and weighs about 100 pounds. At least that’s how it feels after using graphite rods.
On the last morning the cold to warm water ratio was getting less favorable at the Spot. It was now or never.
Thos. was chucking dries up the big pool.
I waved him down, rerigged him with the dry-dropper combo and gave highly technical instructions.
“Walk around the left of that clump of vegetation, slowly so you don’t make a huge wake, and when the waves die down heave this in there and let it sit, and count to 30. Then twitch it a bit.”
Lo and behold, it worked.
On the medical front, my new right hip didn’t give me any trouble. I didn’t push it either.
Natalia Zukerman
She continued, “If you spray and kill both the predators and the pests, the pests always come back faster. But if you create habitat for the good bugs, eventually the balance returns.”
At Adamah, where a vibrant Jewish life is cultivated in deep connection with the earth, farming goes beyond sustainability, which asks only how to keep things from getting worse. Here, they practice regenerative agriculture, which asks how to leave the land healthier than it was found.
“Borei Pri Ha’Adamah,” is a Jewish blessing recited before eating vegetables and other foods that grow from the ground.Natalia Zukerman
Across the farm’s 20 acres, vegetables grow alongside perennial plantings, chestnut agroforestry, rotational grazing, compost systems and pollinator habitat. More than 100 pounds of food scraps from the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, with which the farm shares the land, are composted every day, feeding both the soil and a flock of laying hens. Cover crops protect and enrich the earth. Trees pull carbon from the atmosphere. Native flowers welcome insects that do work no pesticide can replicate.
“Our goal is to leave the land even more prolific than it would have been without us,” Siller said.
That vision reaches back thousands of years.
Long before “regenerative agriculture” became part of the modern farming vocabulary, Jewish law contained agricultural teachings that assumed the land itself required care, rest and reciprocity.
“There’s so much wisdom in approaching farming from a perspective of partnership,” said Siller.
According to one ancient Jewish teaching, pe’ah, farmers should leave the corners of their fields unharvested to allow people experiencing hunger to gather food.
Now, instead of leaving literal corners untouched, the farm intentionally grows food destined for local emergency food providers. Through its Food Access Fund, produce is planned — not simply donated after harvest — to supply regional pantries with fresh, culturally appropriate vegetables. The farm provides food for The Corner Pantry in Lakeville, Tri-Corner FEED in Millerton and other community partners.
“The law is really asking how we make sure everyone eats,” Siller said. “We reinterpret that to meet today’s reality.”
Another ancient practice, shmita, instructs that farmland rest every seventh year.
For a farm committed to feeding hundreds of local families, abandoning production for an entire season would create another kind of scarcity. Instead, Adamah interprets the principle through ecology.
Roughly one-seventh of the farm remains in cover crops and wildflowers, restoring soil health while creating habitat for native pollinators.
Participants in the educational fellowship program at Adamah define what being in Jewish community means to them.Natalia Zukerman
Rather than treating Jewish law as a rigid historical artifact, Adamah treats it as a living conversation, one that asks not only what previous generations practiced but what those values require now.
That distinction feels especially meaningful in a moment when Jewish identity is often flattened into political shorthand.
“It’s like the opposite of the internet here,” said Siller. “Here, people are in community with each other, understanding each other as whole people.”
Each participant in the educational fellowship program run by the farm defines what being in Jewish community means to them. Some arrive hoping to reconnect with ancestral agricultural traditions. Others come because they want to farm in a pluralistic Jewish community.
Jewish programming is only one aspect of Adamah’s work. Beyond its religious affiliation, Adamah is a community farm with a wide reach in the local community. For many in the region who join the farm’s CSA, Adamah is a source of fresh, seasonal produce. For local composters bringing their scraps, it’s a place where they can transform their food waste into rich fertilizer. For attendees of the farm’s public programs and children’s activities, Adamah offers connection to local food, soil and the ecosystem.
Hand-painted signs at Adamah Farm serve as blessings and reminders.Natalia Zukerman
This summer, Adamah educators are partnering with the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village for four free, family-friendly workshops in the library’s community garden. On July 1, participants harvested basil to make pesto. On July 16, they’ll pickle cucumbers while learning the science of lacto-fermentation. On Aug. 4, they’ll press flowers and they’ll explore seed saving on Aug. 18.
“The library received a Sustainable and Resilient Communities Grant from the Association for Small and Rural Libraries,” Hunt Library executive director Meg Sher said. “That supported purchasing the seedings and compost for the garden from Adamah, as well as paying for the educational programming and supplies that go with it.”
The grant is also supporting a new Abundance Stand.
“The idea is for it to be a ‘leave what you want, take what you want’ stand,” said Sher. “When people have too many zucchinis, or kale, or flowers, they can drop them off at the Abundance Stand and other people can take what they want. It’s a way to share the abundance within our community.”
A squash blossom in all its golden glory.Natalia Zukerman
This spirit of sharing is one of Siller’s favorite parts of farming in this area. Knowledge itself is communal.
“Local farmers support each other,” Siller said. “We text each other all the time, like, ‘Are you seeing this bug? I’m seeing this bug. What are you doing about it?”
This openness is just another expression of a regenerative philosophy: Healthy ecosystems do not depend on sameness. They depend on diversity held in relationship.
The phacelia blooms for insects most visitors never notice. The compost nourishes organisms hidden beneath the soil. The corners of the field belong to someone the farmers may never meet.
And the work is rooted in trust that generosity, like healthy soil, becomes richer the more deeply it is cultivated.
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Paul Ramunni playing polka music.
Madi Long
“There are about 500 accordions in this room,” museum founder Paul Ramunni said during a recent tour. “We have another 200 in the basement, so we’re cracking 700.”
But Ramunni insists the collection is not really about accordions.
“It’s the stories,” he said. “The instruments are just the carriers.”
For more than a decade, Ramunni and his wife, Marsha, have been collecting not only instruments but also the family histories attached to them. The result is what may be one of the most unusual museums in New England — a place where music, immigration, war and local history come together.
A Childhood Instrument Rediscovered
Ramunni’s own relationship with the accordion began on Long Island in the 1950s. His mother, who was of Italian ancestry, insisted he learn to play.
“I said, ‘Anything but that,’” he recalled. “The kids are going to make fun of me.”
He played for about three years before eventually putting the instrument away when he went to college.
More than four decades later, while spending time with Marsha in rural Vermont, something unexpected happened.
“I woke up with the urge to play the accordion again,” he said.
Soon after, he found a collector who was preparing to send several accordions to a Holocaust museum. The instruments had reportedly come from Dachau, a WWII concentration camp, where the victims were forced to give them up or perform for the guards.
The story stunned him.
“You mean to tell me every one of these accordions has a back story?” he remembered asking.
From that moment, Ramunni began seeking out instruments to collect and asking their owners about the back stories.
Paul and Marsha Ramunni have turned a collection of accordions — and the memories attached to them — into one of the Northwest Corner’s most unusual attractions.Madi Long
More Than A Collection
One of the first stories involved an elderly woman in Torrington whose late husband’s accordion sat unplayed for years.
When Ramunni picked up the instrument and began playing it, the woman broke down in tears.
“That was my husband’s voice,” she told him, referring to the sound of her late husband’s favorite instrument.
The couple had fled Europe during WWII with little more than a suitcase and the accordion.
“It was the family album,” Ramunni said.
Many of the instruments tell stories of immigration and war.
One accordion currently in Ramunni’s museum belonged to a World War II veteran who operated a landing craft during the Normandy invasion and often played it for his fellow marines.
The museum displays a photograph the veteran took of the soldiers aboard the vessel before they landed on the beach. Family members said many of the young men pictured never returned home.
More recently, a Ukrainian immigrant donated an accordion after losing family members during the current war with Russia.
“He said, ‘I can’t play it anymore,’” Ramunni recalled, noting that it had too many memories that he wanted to forget.
A Labor Of Love
The museum’s location is closely tied to Ramunni’s own history. In the early 1980s, he and a business partner purchased the North Canaan railroad station, where he operated a CPA firm.
He sold the building after a 2001 fire devastated the station. Two decades later, when space became available in the restored building, he returned to house the collection that had outgrown his North Canaan home. Since opening the museum in 2021, he said, it has welcomed more than 9,000 visitors.
Visitors come from throughout New England and beyond, many bringing their own stories along with old accordions. Some arrive hoping to repair an instrument.
The museum functions as more than just an exhibition space; Ramunni repairs accordions. The couple also buys and sells instruments. They host events, tours for school groups, senior centers, day-care programs and historical societies.
Sometimes they take the collection on the road.
“Everything fits in a Subaru,” Marsha said.
She sees the museum as both an educational resource and a community gathering place.
“We’re trying to make an impact here on the town and the area,” she said. “Bringing people in, educating them, giving them a place to learn about history.”
The collection continues to grow through donations.
On a recent afternoon, Salisbury resident Gary Peterson arrived carrying an accordion that had belonged to his grandmother, a Swedish immigrant who played polka music. Now retired and downsizing, Peterson said his family wanted to find someone who could appreciate the instrument rather than simply discard it.
Looking around at the hundreds of accordions on display, Peterson said he was struck by the variety and craftsmanship of the collection. “There are so many different types of accordions,” he said. “It’s awesome.”
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