Get ready for an afternoon of fun and activities geared toward exploring and supporting the natural world! The Town of Rhinebeck is offering this free event at the Thompson-Mazzarella Town Park on April 27, 12-3pm. The Village’s Climate Smart Rhinebeck Task Force is partnering with local nonprofit Dirty Gaia and the Town Recreation Department to organize many special guests and activities.

Roll up your sleeves (help spruce up the pollinator garden!)

Get crafty (make button pins with Starr Library or join the Town Rec Department’s arts table)

Bring your bike for a Bike Rodeo, brought to you by the Rhinebeck Village Police and the Dutchess County Traffic Safety Board.

Watch in wonder (Milo’s Menagerie & a raptor show!)

Learn how to foster Monarch caterpillars and make seed balls (Morton Memorial Library)

Drop off your compost and find out where you can recycle all sorts of stuff.

We’ll have walks too, one with Winnakee Land Trust to ID invasive species, another with a middle school herpetologist who’s already an expert in local amphibians and reptiles. 

Wonder how you’ll keep up? Coffee will be on hand (BYO mug) and we’ll have donuts (while supplies last)!

Below is a full schedule of events—but no need to memorize it. We’ll have a list of everything that’s going on when you get to the park. You’ll see signage and activity as you drive down past Starr Library to the main parking lot. Just show up and choose your adventures!

12pm Renew the Pollinator Meadow: Join the gardeners preparing the pollinator-friendly meadow by the tennis courts, readying it for its second season. If you have gardening gloves, all the better!

12 — 2pm Spring Crafts with Rhinebeck Town Recreation Department: Meet in the two pavilions by the playgound and get crafty! There will be a seed-potting activity as well.

12 — 3pm Fostering Caterpillars and Making Seed Balls: Join Sandy Bartlett of Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff and learn how easy it is to feed and care for Monarch and Swallowtail caterpillars before releasing them. Make seed balls that you can plant in your home garden—or check out seeds from the Library’s Seed collection.

12 — 3pm Operation Zero Waste: There’s not much that can’t be re- or upcycled these days. 

The latest news on the Village Compost site will be on hand, as will  Dorna Schroeter’s Biomimicry Display, showing how much we depend on nature’s genius for our artistic and industrial designs.

12 — 3pm Rethink Your Yard & Home: Check out the electric alternatives to snow blowers, leaf blowers and string trimmers and learn all the steps you can take to make your home more efficient, sustainable and resilient. Lots of info on reimagining your lawn, too!

12 — 3pm Speaking of bikes…Starr’s Book Bike will be on hand, loaded with eco books waiting to be checked out.

12:30pm Herpetology Walk with BMS student Milo—Meet the amphibians and reptiles who call the Town Park home.

1:30pm Birds of Prey Show with Brian Robinson. Brian, an acclaimed falconer who has worked on stage and screen, will bring a selection of his birds and demonstrate their remarkable traits and capabilities.

2pm Invasive Species ID Walk with Winnakee Land Trust.  Learn to identify the plants that may be robbing native species of their traditional habitat and how to remove them.

Chancellor Livingston Elementary School families are invited to walk to school together en masse to celebrate the first day of spring.

All are welcome to join us upstairs at Village Hall for a “watch party” for the DEC Amphibian Migrations and Road Crossings Training.

The training will last two hours. We will watch the training video and do some tabletop activities. There will be Q&A with more experienced folks who have participated in years past.

Free and open to all!

Find out more about Rhinebeck’s Big Night efforts.

Join us at the Rhinebeck Repair Cafe at the Pavilion at Brookmeade. Bring any beloved items to be fixed and let’s save stuff from the landfill. Items are fixed for free by volunteers.

Just when you thought the Walking School Bus couldn't get any cuter, this one will feature kids dressed up! Yes, Chancellor Livingston Elementary School students get to wear their costumes to class on October 31st! 

Join the school community for a BBQ at Lions Mini Park to kick off the school year!

Climate Smart Rhinebeck will be tabling to get folks pumped for Climate Solutions Week!

Come clean your River! We welcome you to take part in the 12th Annual Riverkeeper Sweep, the annual day of service for the Hudson River and its tributaries.

Rhinecliff Dock/Rhinecliff Landing

Join Morton Memorial Library & Community House, The Pollinator Patrol, Rhinebeck Grange, Dirty Gaia, Climate Smart Rhinebeck, and Riverkeeper for a cleanup, native vegetation planting, invasive species removal project at Rhinecliff Dock/Rhinecliff Landing for the 12th Annual Riverkeeper Sweep.

Volunteers will meet at Rhinecliff Dock: 95 Shatzell Avenue, Rhinecliff, NY 12574. Street parking available.

We ask all Sweep volunteers to also bring a hat, sunscreen, a full reusable water bottle, and a face mask, work gloves and hand sanitizer. 

This site is suitable for elementary-aged children with adult supervision.

Questions? Contact Riverkeeper at sweep@riverkeeper.org or Sandy at sandy@mortonrhinecliff.org.

*IMPORTANT! To ensure the safety of volunteers, Sweep Site Leaders, park staff, and our communities, we ask that volunteers adhere to the following guidelines:

• Volunteers are required to pre-register for Sweep, and bring their own masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and water.

• Volunteers should not participate if they have ANY signs of illness or if they have potentially been exposed to COVID-19 within the previous two weeks.

We will return to pursue our application to construct a municipal composting facility at the Village Highway Department property. Because the property is located in the town (not the village), we are before the Town Planning Board. The public is welcome to attend at this Town Hall meeting.

We will be tabling at Terrapin to talk up the Rhinebeck restaurants taking part in composting!

Get Your Hands Dirty Tending To Our Trees for Tribs Planting

Climate Smart Rhinebeck planted riparian saplings with our Marist student collaborators in 2021 along the Landsman Kill at the Village Highway Department. Now many of these wee trees are ready to have their deer-protection removed and have their mulch replenished.

Join us on Earth Day, April 22 1-3pm at the Village Highway Department, 282 Rte 308. 

Please bring your own gloves, hat, and a pair of scissors or box-cutter. Bring your own shovel if you prefer.

RSVP by emailing Trustee Vanessa Bertozzi: trusteebertozzi@villageofrhinebeckny.gov (so I know how many volunteers to expect!)

Climate Smart Rhinebeck Hosts a Walk-to-School Day, the Friday before Earth Day

Lower your carbon footprint and have some fun for Earth Day!

Elementary School Students: Walking School Bus

For elementary school students, we are organizing a “walking school bus” —where families walk as a group and “pick up” students along the way at spots most convenient for them.

Sign up and pick your “bus stop” along the route on the flyer.

We’ll pause at the Lions Mini park for breakfast goodies and then the walking school bus takes off for Chancellor Livingston School.

Thank you to Samuel’s and All That Java for donating. Please sign up to donate or bring your own baked goodies too! Ms. Collins has also arranged for Phantom Gardener and Adams to donate seed packets as a give-away!

Middle-schoolers: Walk. Eat. Cycle. Repeat.

We’ve been partnering with Mr. Frischknecht’s Civics class to advocate for a safe route to school for walkers and bikers. For Earth Day, we are promoting a middle school meetup with free breakfast goodies at the Lions Mini Park gazebo before school. Walk, bike, or skate to school on Friday April 21—it’s good for the environment.

Look for this student-designed sticker and poster by Ayden Su!

There will be a rain date just in case.

As part of the approvals process for the Village to build a compost facility, we are submitting an application to the Rhinebeck Town Planning Board. We went before the Town Planning Board on March 6th.

The next step, where the Town Planning Board wants to hear from you, is the public hearing on April 3. Members of the public are welcome to come in person and voice concerns, support, or ask questions. You may also submit written public comment by emailing: planning@rhinebeckny.gov.

Preliminary site plan is posted at www.rhinebeckcompost.org and you can see the package of documentation here. The photo pictured with this post shows a site similar to the one we’re proposing.

Come to our in-person mixer on February 24, 6-8pm at Rose Hill Farm’s Tap Room. Meet other volunteers—some new, some experienced—and learn about what happens with the data you collect. This will be a fun, social event. All are welcome, even if you’re just amphibian-curious!

We will have some laminated identification sheets to give out. Cash bar. The Tap Room is in a big barn at Red Hook’s Rose Hill Farm, off of Fraleigh Ln.

Find out more about Big Night and amphibian migration volunteering opportunities.

Join us at the Rhinebeck Repair Cafe at the Pavilion at Brookmeade. Bring any beloved items to be fixed and let’s save stuff from the landfill. Items are fixed for free by volunteers.

On January 5, 2023, we co-hosted a workshop with Sustainable Hudson Valley at Starr Library. Attendees got to see a presentation overviewing NY State’s nation-leading CLCPA legislation and scoping plan and what it means for our region. Then, attendees worked in breakout groups along these five themes that map to climate-related recommendations for the new Village Comprehensive Plan:

• Housing/Buildings

• Transportation & Mobility

• Land Use

• Business District & Local Economy

• Waste & Materials Management

Please RSVP!

What our compost pilot participants accomplished together is amazing! We've diverted about 2 tons of food scraps per month and learned so much about how to run a composting program.

Alas, the municipally-funded, residential part ​of the ​pilot is coming to a close at the end of December 2022. But we have lots of ideas for what's next.

Anyone is welcome to our online “wrap-up” meeting:
Dec​ember ​4​th​, 4-5pm
We will give a presentation about the results of the pilot, plans for the future, and information on how to keep ​up the good work with your food scraps. We would love for you to come and brainstorm ideas for how to keep up the momentum!

Please RSVP so that I can send the web-meeting link.

Trustee Vanessa Bertozzi will be presenting an update on Climate Smart Rhinebeck’s work to the Rotary Club. The club, which focuses on community service, has adopted sustainability as one of its core missions.

Sustainable Hudson Valley is presenting this series, Living Sustainably: Nature's Way, as part of Vassar’s LLI programming. In this session, Trustee Vanessa Bertozzi will give a presentation on NY State’s Climate Smart Communities program and how to get involved in your town’s actions.