The Hartford Farmers’ Market is well on its way to becoming a reality.

A core group of persons that have showed interest from the very beginning met to draft Market Rules, Market Budget, Market Vendor Application form, and create a Board of Directors.

A press release has been issued to all the local papers announcing that the Market has been created and will be open Sundays 10am to 2pm from mid-May to mid-Oct. at the Hartford Firehouse.

The Hartford High School Graphic Design class is creating a Market logo.

Year 1 will be a little unusual because nothing tangible really exists yet.  By year 2 the Market should be running full ahead and the Board of Directors will be elected by the member vendors of the market.

A “Member Item” funding request has been made to Assemblyman Tony Jordan’s office but the State Budget mess leaves this request up in the air for now. Unfortunately the market does not have the luxury to wait. It will need start up money sooner rather than later. At the upcoming Town Board meeting on 4/13/10, The Market Board of Directors will request year 1 start up funds to get the market off the ground.

The Board of Directors for the Market year 1 are; Dana Haff – President (since this whole thing was my idea anyway), Pat Imbimbo – Market Manager, Andrea Wade – advertising & promotion, Emily DeBolt – Secretary/Treasurer, and Patty Happy – Board Member. 

If you support this market, please come to the Town Board meeting at 7pm Tuesday 4/13/10 and let us know.       Dana

Today I received a phone call from NYS Ag & Markets. I was informed that Hartford was awarded a $24,000 Farmland Protection Planning Grant.  The application for this grant was done during the planning process of our current Comprehensive Review (Master Plan) with the help of Consultant Brandy Saxton. 

This grant is to develope an agricultural and farmland protection plan and should not be confused with an implementation type of grant which is designed to buy up the developmental rights of farmland.

The Town Board will need to appoint a 5 or 7 member Agricultural Advisory Committee made up of Hartford Farmers.

The town will also need to contract with a consultant experienced in drafting these type of plans. The Ag Advisory Committee and the consultant will then work closely together to draft up a plan.

As per the Ag & Market website, Farmland protection plans should identify the location of farmland proposed to be protected, the value of that land to the local economy, the value of the land as open space, consequences of possible conversion and the level of conversion pressure on the proposed land.

Dana

Washington County Tourism has a new website www.washingtonnycounty.com . This site is still under construction until it is sufficiently populated with events and links to businesses. A link to this site is provided via our Town of Hartford website under “Pages”. If you have a Hartford event or tourism related business please go to this website and populate it. On the bottom right side of the site you will find “Link your Business” and “Post your event”. You will find forms to fill out that will allow the site to link people to your website.  Some events that you might not think of as tourism events really are. A church supper for instance would qualify for the event calendar. It is also a good idea for you to list your business with google business . This way when a tourist wants to plan their itinerary through the County Tourism website, your location will pop up on a map. Some functions of the website do not function yet, that is because there has not been enough businesses yet signing up to populate the site and provide info. This is sort of like “what came first, the chicken or the egg?”. Well, if you have a Hartford Agri-business for example, put your egg in the basket and the county will come up with the chicken.  Dana

Governor Paterson recently signed into law a new initiative enabling you to receive alerts  when a moderate or high level sex offender moves into an area of interest to you. It is called NY-ALERT. It will also notify you of weather alerts, highway emergencies, Amber alerts, etc. It can be fine tuned to alert you just for Hartford if you want to narrow it down to your local region. 

I signed up for the alert and it took me about 15 minutes of fiddling around until I got all the alerts I wanted. I chose the whole town of Hartford plus a distance circle of some miles around my house which took in small parts of neighboring towns.

The alerts can be sent to you via email, cell text, pager, fax, etc. You create the custom notification system you want used.

In order to create and account (no charge) and sign up for this, go to www.ny.gov/governor/and choose the various options available. The NY-ALERT website is provided by the NY State Emerg. Mngmnt Office (SEMO).

Dana

Normally, during Americade week some bikers just roar through town on their way to somewhere else.  Americade is getting so large that the organization needs to offer activities away from Lake George that the bikers can participate in.

So, they are planning a Scavenger Hunt, much like a Poker Run and asked me if Hartford would like to participate. This Scavenger Hunt will get the bikers to actually stop in town and take a minute to look around.

Three businesses (Lulu’s Diner, Dave Hick’s Sporting Goods, and Pole Valley Players Club) will have a special stamp to punch the bikers cards with. The bikers need to go to at least 8 out of the 10 towns participating to get their cards stamped.  On the last day the bikers return their stamped cards to Americade in order to qualify for some grand prize.  Americade will provide Red Banners for the businesses to help the bikers find them, along with a unique stamp.

The rules for the participating businesses are that they need to be biker friendly (decent size parking lot), serve no alcohol, and be open 9am to 5pm during Americade week.

The town most likely will not see much business from this scavenger hunt but it might help in the future for a biker to know where a local diner is, or where they can buy some gloves and bullets, or where they can rent some clubs and a cart.

Americade this year will run from Monday June 5th to Friday June 11th.

Dana

Did you know that there is a local food pantry located in the Baptist Church on Main Street? Local volunteers served over 1600 people in 2009. From 2002 to 2008 the number of families who used the pantry increased by a factor of 10 and the number from 2008 to 2009 increased by 30%.

The Hartford Central School National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) is teaming up with the local volunteers at the food pantry to do a yearly food drive. Each month the NJHS will collect various items at the school and then deliver the goods to the food pantry to help those in need.

Boxes will be placed through the school so please send any items you think could help those less fortunate. The NJHS will designate 2 items per month, but will not turn anything away. For the month of March the NJHS will be collecting tuna fish and paper towels.

Please help those in need. If you have any questions please contact teachers Megan Capone at [email protected] or Mercedes Barnard at [email protected]           Dana

The Hartford Volunteer Fire Co. like most rural Volunteer Fire Companies faces a declining membership, plus the existing members are not getting any younger. However, in the last couple months, Hartford has recruited 4 new members, 3 of which are experienced interior firefighters and 1 of those is even an EMT. HVFC President Kevin McCarthy attributes HVFC forward thinking strategy and recently upgraded apparatus as a major contributor in this recent development.  When you are volunteering to risk your life, the firefighters appreciate not having to rely on some antique equipment. A link to the HVFC can be found on this web site, upper left side under pages. Click on “Links”  Dana

On Feb 18th, I sent a letter to Congressional Rep. Scott Murphy requesting aid in the tune of $60,000 for the enlistment center. The masonry foundation under the center is failing and an engineering study estimated that would be what it would take to repair it. If the foundation goes the building itself will soon follow. The last time the foundation was worked on was in the 30’s and that was just a patch up job. The Hartford Museum and attached Enlistment Center belong to the Municipality, but all the contents belong to the Hartford Historical Group. The Historical Group, led by Peter Swano also acts as the Stewards of the buildings. On March 11th, at the request of Scott Murphy’s office, Peter and I traveled to the Rep’s. Saratoga office to see what can be done to raise the needed funds. Mr. Mark Luciano of the Congressman’s office listened to Peter and I and felt confident that they could help find the funding needed to jack the building up and replace the foundation. While Scott Murphy’s office has no money to allocate for us, they know the contacts and or grant sources to source the funding. We will keep our fingers crossed. The Post Star had a front page story on 3/10/10 about the Enlistment Center and the condition of the foundation. The paper also had another smaller story in the local section on 3/11/10 about the mound of dirt in the Baptist Church cemetery that acts as the Civil War Memorial.  This Civil War Enlistment Center is the only remaining Civil War Enlistment Center in the entire state. Once the foundation crumbles away and the building fails it will be too late to preserve our cultural heritage.