MILLERTON — Nearly a year and a half after opening The Dig in Millerton, Katja Schultz has decided to close the café and store for good on Friday, Dec. 31. The village resident poured her heart and energy into creating an accessible, comfortable community space at 3 Main St. Yet when 2022 arrives, the village will find that cheerful space of everyday enjoyment vacant, another casualty of the COVID pandemic and the economy that has fallen ill alongside it.
The Dig
Schultz and her husband James teamed up with their friend, Raquel Madar, to open The Dig in August 2020. Since then, it has become a place where people can purchase groceries sourced from local vendors and do so much more.
They can engage in community events, purchase artwork by local artists, treat themselves to fresh smoothies and crepes and pass time in its relaxing outdoor patio space.
Working alongside the owners are Webutuck High School students Kaitlyn Cope and Avery Wickwire, multiple volunteers and members of Schultz’s family, including her mother Natalie Pere.
Yet even with The Dig’s initial success, Schultz understood the all-consuming nature of running a small business, especially in Millerton. Over time, she said it became obvious that she and her mom couldn’t sustain The Dig wasn’t, between the time commitment and the challenge of hiring people in today’s climate.
Deciding it was a lot for her and her family, Schultz said. “We had met our goals and I felt like this was the right time to close. It felt like we had a good season one and we didn’t want to have a bad season two.”
Despite their loss, Schultz said she and her mother will be celebrating till the end of the month — in other words, they plan to go out with a bang.
The Dig will be open Fridays through Mondays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a blowout sale before Christmas and plenty of fun before closing on the 31st.
Considering her future beyond The Dig, Schultz said her first goal is to ski as much as possible with her children and enjoy her weekends with them. Though she’ll no longer be an active merchant in the village business community, she wants to shift her focus and time to learn how to help other local businesses thrive.
Boiling the community’s needs down to one word, Schultz said she believes the Millerton merchants need more connection. She consulted with Lynn Caponera, who owns the building at 3 Main St., about the community’s needs, along with other Millerton business owners about how to stimulate more commerce.
Shultz has also discussed how to offer incentives in town “that are different but are mostly needed” to draw people in. She also wants to highlight the community’s existing resources to attract more visitors and figure out how to translate the digital world of connections into actual experiences.
Going forward, Schultz, who remains open to learning new information, hopes to bridge people together with new ideas — almost as a community liaison. Recognizing the devotion local business owners pour into their enterprises and the challenge of making a profit these days, she wants to make a difference with what she learned from running The Dig and help other merchants prosper.
3 Main St.
Before The Dig, 3 Main St. was previously occupied by a small grocer, the Millerton Mercantile. Caponera explained she originally bought the building with the intention of having her nephew and nieces run it as a small farm grocery store for residents who couldn’t drive to a supermarket.
Opening in the summer of 2019, Caponera’s nephew, Stephen Murphy, managed the Millerton Mercantile for just more a year before it closed.
Based on her experience, Caponera said running a business in Millerton is a dream, given all the support fellow merchants give each other. However, there are challenges with limited parking in the village and the enormous time commitment.
“For the people who actually run it, you really have to have it be your only job because it really is a full-time job,” Caponera said. “What happened with us, we thought it would sort of seamlessly run itself, but there’s so much involved in running anything to do with food. It was really a labor-intensive operation.”
A shifting Main Street
From what she’s heard from other vendors who occupied 3 Main St., Thorunn Kristjansdottir, who heads up the Millerton Business Alliance (MBA), recognizes the parking challenge, especially at the top of Main Street,which has “nothing but office spaces around it.” With The Dig leaving that space, Kristjansdottir said there’s no major draw to that part of Main Street. Instead, the business community appears to taper off around the businesses located on Railroad Plaza, where the Harney Tea Room is with Golden Wok and Country Gardeners Florist.
There is the popular Moonwake Yoga, though, on the second floor at 5 Main St., run by owner Kate Shanley (formerly called Buddhi Tribe).
“Whenever there’s a new business that opens or someone moves to town, we’re always excited… to have a new offering to the mix of offerings available in Millerton,” Kristjansdottir said. “The business owner has to make the decision. No matter what that decision is [when a business closes], it’s always a loss for the community.”
Along with filling the vacant space on Main Street, Kristjansdottir said she hopes “something opens up that has a draw for itself and be another flavor to add to the mixture of Millerton.”
“I always get a little concerned when businesses close west on Main Street,” said Mayor Jenn Najdek, “but we’ve been pretty fortunate. Usually when something closes, it’s not too long before something else takes its place.”
Asked what she’d like to see as the space’s next prospective business, Caponera said it would be great to have a store similar to The Dig or the Millerton Mercantile — something that won’t create a lot of noise and perhaps offer a gathering spot and local groceries.
Caponera advised anyone interested in renting 3 Main St. to get in touch with agent Brad Rebillard at Dutchess County Realty in Millerton.
From left, workers at The Dig Avery Wickwire, Natalie Pere, Kaitlyn Cope, Zachary Pere and co-owner Katja Schultz greeted customers at the popular 3 Main St. site in Millerton. Photo by Aly Morrissey Photography
Two uprooted locust trees still lie in the yard in front of Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennels where they fell on a fence during a storm on Thursday, June 19.
“We saw the storm getting stronger,” Ortiz said. “We started talking, ‘we should check for trees.’ That’s when I looked outside the Kubota and I just started screaming ‘run!’”
A branch from a tree just above their utility vehicle had split. The two men ran from the vehicle, but the falling branch caught Nunez and struck his back.
The fallen branch caused some soreness and bruising, Nunez said, but no broken bones. After a short hospital visit, doctors sent Nunez home to rest and heal. He has since returned to work, helping to repair the broken fences and clean up the storm damage that still lingers.
Uprooted locust trees mangled fences, damaged roofs and knocked down power lines all over the 400 acre farm that houses the Animal Farm Foundation’s shelter.Nathan Miller
The powerful storm uprooted and knocked down branches of dozens of black locust trees on the Animal Farm Foundation’s property and on neighboring properties along Pugsley Hill Road and Shaefer Road. Nikki Juchem, Director of Operations and Public Policy for the shelter, was in a meeting with Executive Director Bernice Clifford and founder Jane Berkey when a tree outside the main office building was struck by lightning and fell on the farm’s donkey enclosure.
“It’s really a miracle that everyone was unscathed, as well as the animals,” Juchem said.
In addition to Nunez’s injuries and the damaged donkey enclosure, fallen trees destroyed the fencing that secured the Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennel yard, fencing for a horse paddock, and poked a hole through the roof and into the ceiling of one of the facility’s dog play rooms.
And more was at risk than just the employees, volunteers, dogs, and other animals already sheltered at the farm. The shelter was expecting about 15 more dogs to arrive shortly after the storm.
“We were fixing up the horse barn to be dog kennels,” Juchem said. “Luckily we had all the extra space, because we would have been in a real pickle.”
All the dogs that were being kept in the original kennel building had to be moved to the newly renovated kennels so the noisy repairs wouldn’t bother them, Juchem said. Fosters stepped up to house dogs that couldn’t fit while necessary repairs were being completed, too.
A log stuck on a fence post outside the shelter’s kennel building.Nathan Miller
“Lots of damage but we had a lot of support from the community,” Juchem said. “We had contractors come out immediately to start cutting down trees and helping us out with the cleanup, so we’re doing OK now.”
The cleanup and repair process is ongoing, but Juchem said the total cost is still unclear.
Animal Farm Foundation is a nonprofit dog shelter with a focus on “pit bulls,” Juchem said. “Breed is not behavior,” she said, emphasizing the organization’s guiding philosophy. More information on volunteering, donating to the shelter, or adopting a dog is available online at www.animalfarmfoundation.org
The Animal Farm Foundation will be collaborating with the North East Community Center Farmers Market to bring adoptable dogs to the market every Saturday during the month of August.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.
Pearson first encountered the world of alternative publications — magazines filled with experimental writing, artworks in the form of a book, and samizdat literature — as a young writer living in Berlin just before The Wall came down in 1989. Later, in New York City, she spent a great deal of time with artists “who were always making and assembling, whose continuous art-making made the thin membrane between art and life even more porous,” she explained.
Pearson traces the idea of publishing to a 2001 exhibition of artist-poet Joe Brainard. That show led to “The Nancy Book,” Siglio’s debut title in 2008, and she’s never looked back. The book contains over fifty full-page reproductions of Brainard’s dazzlingly accomplished and witty drawings of the cartoon strip character, Nancy. It includes essays and contributions by Robert Creeley, Ann Lauterbach, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, and other poets of great renown, all thrilled to celebrate and remember Brainard (sometimes called “a poet’s artist”) who died of AIDS in 1994. Pearson said, ‘My first project with Brainard was such a good experience, I kept going. “
Since then, Pearson, the sole proprietor of Siglio, has designed, edited, and published over 40 books and other printed editions. Her books are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of texts and images and collage-like assemblages, as well as for carefully designed and gorgeously printed volumes. Her list includes many “rediscoveries” of unpublished manuscripts and little-known publications. At the same time, she has commissioned new work from an impressive array of artists and writers such as Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle and Cecilia Vicinua among others.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.Richard Kraft
Though most Siglio books feature work by artists and writers from the 1960s to today, one standout— “Tantra Song” (2011) — showcases vibrant 17th-century Indian tantric paintings collected by poet-ethnographer Franck André Jammes, their modernist feel echoing Hilma af Klint or Brice Marden. Siglio also frequently draws on the spirit of the Fluxus movement, reissuing works by figures like John Cage and Ray Johnson with editions that honor their playful, ephemeral, and poetic origins.
Siglio also excels at photo-narratives rooted in highly specific, often eccentric concepts. “Memory” (2020), by avant-garde writer Bernadette Mayer, reproduces her journal and daily rolls of 35mm film from a month in the Berkshires in 1971, capturing the texture of each day. “Call and Response” (2022), created during COVID lockdown by composer and visual artist Christian Marclay, pairs his photographs of London’s quieted streets with musical scores composed in reply by his friend Bruce Beresford—each image in dialogue with sound.
Siglio books are sold through it’s website (sigliopress.com), as well as museum or specialty bookshops. (The Lenox Bookstore represents a number of Siglio books; the newly opened Lakeville Books & Stationery has copies of “Tantra Song.”) In all cases, Pearson strives to make “two or three degrees of connection” with each book buyer, including a “special gift” — often a piece of printed ephemera — with each purchase.
