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While on a holiday break at the Columbia County Fair, I'm sharing this special episode featuring local news stories from the Chatham Courier newspapers of the 1800s, available through the Hudson River Valley Heritage Historical Newspapers Archive.

I'll be back to normal programming in the next episode. Watch out for the horse thieves!

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"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

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I finally received my first Listener Question!!! (You can use the link in the show notes above to send in yours.)

So when listener Murphy asked how to create "the ultimate Hudson Valley picnic before it's too late," I embarked on a journey through picnicking's rich history and romantic execution. I learn some French, I learn some Basque, it's a worldly experience through time, seasons, and picnic traditions on the podcast today.

Matthew White, proprietor of the Hillsdale General Store, shares wisdom on picnic hampers and the theatrical experience they create. Betsy Jacks, executive directer emerita of the Thomas Cole Site in Catskill, walks us through one of Thomas Cole's classics: "A Pic-Nic Party." Colu Henry shares her pro picnic tips (and we get a recipe for her Snappy and Herby Potato Salad, soon to be featured in her forthcoming cookbook, out in Spring 2026), Rachel Merriam, a sommelier and owner of Fulton & Forbes, tells us which wines to get, and Tom Grattan, novelist and Official Book Reader for the podcast, shares his short story selections for a picnic.

This might be the most times the words "picnic basket" have ever been said in a single podcast episode!! And it's all for you, Murphy, anonymous listener who sent in their question. Hope this helps!!

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

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It’s a Jiffy Audio Postcard today from Rothermel Park in Kinderhook, where the Pinkster Festival – a powerful Black cultural celebration with Dutch colonial roots – was revived for the first time in more than 200 years.

Pinkster began as a Dutch Christian holiday but evolved into a vital gathering for enslaved and free Black New Yorkers in the 18th and 19th centuries. This episode follows the festival’s modern-day return, in partnership with the African American Archive of Columbia County and local organizations working to reconnect descendants, reanimate memory, and reclaim a once-forgotten holiday.

You’ll hear from festival organizers, historians, community members, and King Charley, as they honor ancestors through the libations ceremony and explore the unique shape of slavery in the Northeast.

We also reflect on what it means to hold this celebration just steps from the historic Persons of Color Cemetery, and how genealogy and place are being used to build one of the largest known Black family trees in New York State.

If you found this episode interesting, text it to someone who might like to hear it! Word of mouth really helps this show grow.

And if you'd like to hear my earlier episode with the Archive where we visited the Jan Van Hoesen-Charles Marriott House, you can find that here.

To learn more about the African American Archive of Columbia County, visit them at: https://www.afamarchivecc.org

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Send us a text

I locked James out of the studio for this one.

Because Ruth Reichl – my hero, my origin story, my reason for existing – came to Chatham, New York, to judge the Great Chatham Bake-Off. And I, The Hungry Eye, the anonymous food critic for the podcast, had to be there. In the gazebo. In the humidity. Bearing witness.

In this episode, I take you to the center of it all in the village square as 30+ bakers compete for the coveted first place ribbon: There’s a pineapple-pistachio-bacon crumble cake. A focaccia interpretation of Edvard Munch's "The Scream." A one-year-old that I'm not quite convinced actually baked what they said he baked. 

Jack Shear, Betsy Thorleifson, and Ruth – each gracious, judicious, precise – guide us through the cakes, pavlovas, brownies, pies, cobblers, savories, and sweets, as they wield fate and crown the worthy.

It's an immersive experience on the show today, a show that is now proud to be a James Beard Award Winning-Adjacent podcast. And if you want the full hour-long conversation I had with Ruth (we talked about her NYT disguises, how she invented such personas as Chloe and Aunt Betty, and how I might improve my disguises as the anonymous food critic), it’s available to premium subscribers as an Audio Exclusive in The Jiffy-Mart Members' Lounge.

You can upgrade to a premium membership here.

Be sure to read Ruth's memoir of her time as the restaurant critic for the New York Times, "Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise."

Learn more about the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation here.

And follow Betsy Thorleifson on Instagram: @ninecakes

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Send us a text

In this episode, I’m continuing our tour through The Jiffy-Mart – my online bodega and members’ lounge – and this time, we’re stepping through the forest refrigerator straight into the Catskill Mountains. I’m bringing back my series "Tree Minute" to finally learn what I’m looking at out there in the woods. To help, I’ve teamed up with Giovanna D’Angelo, an education forester with the Catskill Forest Association, who graciously agreed to teach me how to tell a yellow birch from a black birch and why some aspens quake that way.

Then, I visit my friend, novelist Tom Grattan, to hear what he’s been reading lately. He’s got four summer books to recommend, from a queer coming-of-age classic to a smart novella about the illusions of perfection – and the page-turner set in upstate New York that everybody's been talking about for the past year.

Books We Talk About

• "Tramps Like Us," by Joe Westmoreland
• "The Hive and the Honey," by Paul Yoon
• "The God of the Woods," by Liz Moore
• "Perfection," by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes

Links & Resources

• Browse The Jiffy-Mart: thejiffy.xyz/jiffy-mart
• Follow me on Instagram: @jamescave
• Follow Catskill Forest Association: @catskillforest
• Follow Tom Grattan: @tomgrattan

Join the Community!

If you like this podcast, consider becoming a premium member. You’ll get audio exclusives (including my side chat with Tom about blurbs), behind-the-scenes updates, and access to J: Magazine The Style Magazine Of The James Cave Instagram Feed. Every membership helps me keep making this work.
Join or upgrade here.

I’ve been thinking about blurbs (those endorsements you see on book covers) and I’d love to know: What would your blurb be about this podcast? You can text me your blurb (there’s a link in the show notes), and maybe I’ll share a few on the next episode.

If you enjoyed this one, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Word of mouth is still the best way to keep the Grab Bag of Goods stocked and thriving.

Until next time, I'll see you on the Instagram feed.

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Send us a text

In this episode, we tour the Jiffy-Mart, the official digital bodega of the James Cave Instagram Feed.

Then we dive into a thoughtful exploration of land acknowledgments with Indigenous expert Heather Bruegl, who shares insights on creating meaningful statements that honor ancestral lands and their original stewards:

• Native-land.ca serves as a starting point for researching whose land you're on
• Tribal territories often overlapped, unlike modern state borders
• Research should include archives, libraries, land records, and the National Archives
• Always do preliminary work before approaching tribal nations for collaboration
• Land acknowledgments require months of research, reflection and action behind the words
• Heather shares the experience of returning to her ancestral homelands in New York
• Museums need better support systems for BIPOC workers presenting hard histories
• Even as an Indigenous person, Heather acknowledges her role in colonization
• A meaningful acknowledgment should feel like entering a form of ceremony

Heather Breugl can be reached at https://www.heatherbruegl.com.

You can upgrade to a Jiffy Premium account (aka J'Fay Supreme) here: https://thejiffymart-shop.fourthwall.com/pages/memberships

If you like the podcast, please share it with a friend. You can also send me a text through the link in the show notes. I read all messages!

Follow me on Instagram: @jamescave

Visit the website: thejiffy.xyz

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Send us a text

It's Mud Season here, not just at The James Cave Instagram Feed, but across all of the northeast.

And for this relaxing Sleep Hike, I thought it would be peaceful to take a restful walk through Mud Creek, in Hudson, New York. Mud Creek is a part of the Mud Creek Environmental Learning Center, located on the property of Columbia County Soil & Water Conservation District office.

They host a variety of hands-on, inquiry based, environmental education programs, and here, we take a Sleep Hike through its marshy landscape. Mud Creek is home to beavers, muskrats, rabbits, coyotes, lots of birds, potentially ticks, and even a bobcat.

But because it's a Sleep Hike, you don't have to worry about running into any of that wildlife. Just sit back, relax, and let me take you on this peaceful path to slumber.

If you enjoyed this Sleep Hike, consider subscribing to "The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" wherever you listen. And if you're a subscriber, share it with someone you love or hate! Either way, it helps.

If you'd like to support this kind of slow content – and unlock exclusive audio extras – upgrade to J'Fay Supreme. I have a few tiers of support, and it really helps make projects like this possible.

OK – good night!

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Send us a text

It’s spring in upstate New York, also known as Mud Season. In this episode, I go searching for the answers to its riddles: why Mud Season exists, what’s really happening down there in the ground, and why the ground breathes more heavily when it's stressed out – just like me.

To guide me through it all, I visit Dr. Jane Lucas, a soil ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. We talk about microbial dormancy, stressed-out soil experiments, why New York has such intense mud, and whether it’s possible to have a mud season on Mars.

It turns out one teaspoon of soil contains more microbes than there are humans on Earth. That's over 8 billion microorganisms in just one spoonful – an incomprehensibly dense and diverse ecosystem beneath our feet. Mud Season!

Guest:

Dr. Jane Lucas – Soil ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, lead researcher on the Stressed Out Soils (SOS) project

Topics Covered:

• ​What is Mud Season, really?
• ​Why the Hudson Valley’s soil is so soggy
• ​What topsoil has in common with stressed-out humans
• ​How warming, drought, antibiotics, and fungicides affect soil health
• ​Why microbes might be your garden’s secret workforceWhy dirt isn’t dead (it’s just misunderstood)

Extras:

• ​Watch my tour of the Stressed Out Soils site on Instagram: @jamescave
• ​Hear more from Jane Lucas on From the Forest: catskillforest.org

Want to know if Mars could ever have a mud season? Subscribe to the J'Fay Supreme level to hear this Audio Exclusive.

• ​Upgrade to J'Fay Supreme for the bonus audio: $5/month or $50/year → Subscribe here!

Help Spread the Mud: Love the show? Email your favorite neighborhood local newspaper editor and let them know The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast exists. Because next time they publish a roundup of upstate podcasts, I'd love to make the cut. It might be hard to describe, but just tell them it will all make sense one day.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. Until next time, I’ll see you on the Instagram feed!

Subscribe to my newsletter, The Jiffy!

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Send us a text

This week brought the first official day of spring – but as a confusing and misplaced winter storm batters my windows, I’m bringing you one last cozy episode before we fold up the Cozy Map for good.

In this episode, I visit one of my favorite places on earth: Rodgers Book Barn in Hillsdale, NY. I chat with legendary owner Maureen Rodgers, who’s been stocking her shelves with used books since the 1960s, about how she finds books, what makes a book cozy, and how the book barn industry has changed over the decades.

Then, I drive to Kinderhook to visit my friend Tom Grattan, esteemed novelist and experienced reader. I snoop around his book shelves a bit, and Tom gives us three of his top reading recommendations for 2025 so far – with one bonus pick saved just for The Jiffy newsletter subscribers at the J'Fay Supreme level.

Guests:

• Maureen Rodgers – Owner of Rodgers Book Barn

• Tom Grattan – Author of "The Recent East" and "In Tongues"

Books Recommended by Tom:

1. "Mothers and Sons," by Adam Haslett
2. "Ghost Roots," by Pemi Aguda
3. "Lives of the Saints," by Nancy Lemann
4. Mysterious Book by Important Author

Extras:

• Get Maureen’s Cozy Reading Tips + Tom’s Bonus Book Pick – only at the J'Fay Supreme level.
• Upgrade for $5/month or $50/year: https://thejiffy.beehiiv.com/upgrade

Follow Tom on Instagram: @tomgrattan

Follow the Book Barn on Instagram: @rodgersbookbarn

Follow me: @jamescave

More Jiffy: thejiffy.xyz

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Send us a text

On today's episode, I’m making a house call to one of the oldest – and most mysterious – homes in the Hudson Valley. The Van Housen-Marriott House on Route 66 has stood for centuries, witnessing the full weight of American history. It was a site of Dutch colonial settlement, a place of enslavement, and, possibly, a stop on the Underground Railroad. But now, this house is falling apart, and efforts to save it are racing against time.

As part of a project with the African American Archive of Columbia County, I speak with Ed Klingler, Brenda Shufelt, Lisa Fludd-Smith, and historian Fergus Bordewich to unpack the house’s past and explore what it truly means to preserve history.

Could this weathered Dutch home have once sheltered freedom seekers? And what does it take to save a piece of history before it disappears? It's all here on this very historic podcast episode.

To learn more about the African American Archive of Columbia County, visit: https://www.afamarchivecc.org

To find the Cozy Map Of Comfy Places, visit: https://thejiffy.xyz/are-you-looking-for-the-cozy-map-of-comfy-places

Support the show

"The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast" is an audio documentary zine – the official podcast of The Jiffy – exploring the odd histories, cozy mysteries, and surprising characters of upstate New York. Each episode is a small adventure, told with curiosity, humor, and the occasional text message from a stranger.

New episodes drop every other week. Subscribe, share, and take the scenic route with us.

Follow James on Instagram: @jamescave

Subscribe to the newsletter here.