Hometown Oneonta 05-19-22

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& The Otsego-Delaware Dispatch LEAF: 40 years of compassion and service, page 5

2 2-178 m 3 4 7 60 sbbq.co brook Volume 14, No. 31

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AllOTSEGO.com, OTSEGO COUNTY’S DAILY NEWSPAPER/ONLINE

The storm that wasn’t

The skies looked fierce over the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown Monday afternoon. Severe weather, including high winds, tornadoes and downpours, was predicted. Thankfully all our region got was some rain and spotty gusts of wind. Summer is just around the corner starting June 21. The average rainfall for our area in June is 3.5 inches over a period of 11 days. Average June temps are 76 degrees for a high, and 52 degrees for a low. INSIDE

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►A new license plate for rural Upstate New York?, page 3 ►Oneonta’s among most endangered historic sites, Seven to Save is key, pNew linage 3 ►A FEW THOUGHTS ON IMPORTANT THINGS: Our columnists this week take on the election district boundary changes in our county, a visit to a new shrine to Bob Dylan and the Buffalo mass shooting, page 4. ►A piano tossed out a front door? page 6. ►Cornell cooperative master gardener plant sale: what to expect this year, page 10. ►Bear bites boy, page 6. Follow Breaking News On

AllOTSEGO.com

COMPLIMENTARY

Oneonta, N.Y., Thursday, May 19, 2022

County bisected in election lines New election district lines for the United States House of Representatives and the New York state Senate bisect Otsego County and lead to questions about which candidates will stand for the November 2022 contests. New York’s highest court rejected original district lines that would have found most of the county in the 19th Congressional District — a matchup that, until Governor Kathy Hochul appointed him Lieutenant Governor, would have pitted Rep. Antonio Delgado against Duchess County Executive Marc Molinaro. A small slice of the county’s northern edge would have slid into the 21st Congressional District — a seat now held by Rep. Elise Rep. Elise Stefanik Stefanik. Instead, maps available at press time look to fold Cooperstown, Milford, and areas north into the Stefanik district; Oneonta and the southern half of the county would remain in the 19th. Rep. Delgado – who, at press time, had neither resigned from his Congressional seat nor been sworn in as Lieutenant Governor – has entered the primary race for the latter seat and does not appear to be a candidate for re-election to Congress. The new lines exclude Mr. Molinaro’s home Dutchess County from

the 19th District; Mr. Molinaro issued a statement late on the evening of May 16 to announce his intention to continue his candidacy nonetheless. Rep. Stefanik, a Republican who won former President Donald Trump’s endorsement after her vocal backing of his agenda, looks to face former CIA officer Matt Castelli in her race for the newly redrawn 21st Congressional District. The new lines would combine her district with that of fellow congressional incumbent Paul Tonko of Amsterdam; Rep. Tonko said in a statement late on May 16 that he would continue his candidacy in the 20th District despite being a resident of the newly drawn 21st. The state Legislature Rep. Paul Tonko and Governor Hochul’s rejected district map would have put the whole of Otsego County — along with a wide swath of the state stretching from Binghamton to Schenectady — into a single state Senate district, forcing a primary between two incumbent Republican Senators, Peter Oberacker and Jim Tedisco. The new lines, however, split the county in much the same way as the congressional boundaries, with the northern half in the 49th District, the southern in Continued on page 2

The Farmers’ Museum begins training twins Twin brothers Barley and Rye were about a week old when they got to the Museum. Born in September, they already weigh 525 pounds apiece. When they are grown, they will each weigh one ton. “We just started training the oxen, we are training them to be working animals,” Sandra Vanalstine, a farmer at the Museum, said. Ms. Vanalstine has been with the Museum for two years as a farmer, and now she is in charge of training the oxen. “I try to make it fun for them,” she said. “You start off by simply leading them, petting them, talking to them all of the time. Then come the verbal commands and yokes.” The twins work on commands before the farmer puts on the yokes. “’Haw’ means turn left, ‘gee’ means take a right turn, and ‘whoa’ means stop,” Ms. Vanalstine said. “They understand those words.” “The yokes are used as a type of harness,” she said. “The wood apparatus goes around the neck of the oxen. It gets hooked up to chains or a piece of equipment, depending on what their job is for the day.” “They started out with five-pound yokes. The training of the oxen at The Farmers’ They adjusted nicely, then heavier yokes are Museum has begun and it’s fascinating. “We have twins, they are Brown Swiss introduced,” Ms. Vanalstine said. “They will from Milford, it’s great!” said Bob Thompson, gradually get to 25-pound yokes.” “We will train them for four to five years, then Associate Direcor of Agricultural and Facilities they will be ready and able to work the farm. Support Services.

They are trained to work like a draft horse on the farm,” she said. The life expectancy of a working ox is eight to 10 years. While they train, they handle light work around the farm. “Right now we need to move some sticks we will use for hops growing from one part of the farm to another. That’s perfect light training for them,” Ms. Vanalstine said. Oxen were domesticated around 4000 B.C. “You have to remember the ox was very popular in the United States on farms until around the mid-1800s when they started bringing horses in to work on the farms. Horses were a lot faster,” Steve Davis, a volunteer at the farm for nine years, said. “We have two different forms of animal power,” he said. “Oxen were used on the farms, then horses and finally tractors came into the picture. We try not to use tractors here at The Farmers’ Museum.” He said some area farms still use oxen to plow field, but each plow requires two people (‘teamsters’) and one animal to operate it. The set-up can work up to one half-acre per day. When horses came entered the picture, it only took one person and one animal and they could do two acres a day. Mr. Thompson said, “It’s a lot of fun training oxen. We are very careful with all our animals, that’s the last thing we want is for an animal to get injured.”

THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL & HOMETOWN ONEONTA, OTSEGO COUNTY’S LARGEST PRINT CIRCULATION 2010 WINNERS OF The Otsego County Chamber/KEY BANK SMALL BUSINESS AWARD