A Journal News reporter and photographer came to Van Cortlandt Manor yesterday and filed this report on Animals & Acrobats.

Cool stuff!

Jennifer Pena and her Flight of the Raptors show is one of HVBLogger's favorite parts of his favorite springtime HHV event: Animals & Acrobats, which kicks off today (right now, as we "speak"!), at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton.

Jennifer will be offering her amazing birds of prey demonstrations throughout the weekend. Animals & Acrobats takes place today, tomorrow, and Monday from 10-5. Make it easy on yourself and buy your tickets online. Thousands of visitors tend to flock to the site during this Memorial Day classic. And the weather is looking mighty fine...

If you go, post your thoughts here and feel free to send me some pics or vids and I'll post ‘em.

Ken Sargeant is a Croton-based videographer and HHV fan. Van Cortlandt Manor is a Croton historical site - and its staff is a big fan of Ken!

Recently he visited Historic Hudson Valley food historian Lavada Nahon as she was preparing a meal in VCM's reproduction open-hearth kitchen, capturing it on video and posting a snippet of the results on YouTube.

Van Cortlandt Manor offers limited enrollment open-hearth cooking workshops throughout the year, where you help prepare - and most importantly, consume - a meal in the style of the 18^th century. Some of the workshops feature dishes that are based on actual Van Cortlandt family recipes (or "receipts," as they used to be called). The next one is Saturday, May 17.

Click on the image to watch the video.

Historic Hudson Valley's kick-off event of the season, Hands-on Heritage Crafts at Van Cortlandt Manor , drew a big crowd April 5-6 looking to go to the work the old-fashioned way. And that they did. We had youngsters churning butter, breaking flax, even tin smithing! Adults got in on the acts, too, more images of that to follow.

That weekend's weather did a bit of a flip-flop. The forecast called for grey skies and general sadness on Saturday, with decent sun and warmth on Sunday. Ended up sorta the opposite. Oh well, either way it was a nice kick-off for the spring season. Were you at the event? Did you churn, smith, or sew anything? Let us know.

OK, so this is really late notice (10 days late, yeesh), but I would be remiss if I didn't point out, for those of you who missed it, that the gardens of Van Cortlandt Manor are given huge play in an article in the Escapes section of the July 13 New York Times.

Titled "The Hudson Valley's Fields of Joy," the excellent article by Judy Dobrzynski includes profiles and pretty pictures of five worthy gardens to visit in the Hudson Valley.

Van Cortlandt gets a great spread -- and Judy even points out that pumpkins are grown here! (No mention of Blaze, though. Darn. Next time.)

The Times also profiled Montgomery Place, Historic Hudson Valley's Dutchess County paradise.

In the print version, the article appears on the front cover of Escapes with color photographs of both Van Cortlandt and Montgomery Place. When it jumps to the section's back page, it includes a HUGE color image of  the view of the Hudson from Montgomery Place. The article also profiles the grand gardens at Stonecrop, Bellefield, and Lasdon Park and Arboretum.

The online version includes a slideshow of images that is well worth checking out.