This week: a kettle pond! Two blocks from the Woodbury Green is a six-and-a-half-acre hollow with a swamp at the bottom, and on Saturday morning Flanders Nature Center walks people down into it. The hole is fifteen thousand years old, and the glacier made it. That story is below.
Patrick
The Litchfield Ledger
How A Kettle Pond Forms
Two blocks from the Woodbury Green, between School Street and Judson Avenue, there is a six-and-a-half-acre hollow with a swamp at the bottom. It drops away from the road into a mix of open field, trees, and standing water. On Saturday morning, a Flanders volunteer will walk people down into it.
The hollow is called the Manville Kettle, and its shape is a remnant of how the last glacier melted.
Somewhere around fifteen thousand years ago, the ice sheet that covered New England was falling back to the north. Every so often, a block of ice the size of a building broke off and was left behind, partly buried in that sediment. More sand and gravel piled up around it. When the block finally melted, the ground above it slumped into the space it had occupied.
Geologists call the resulting hollow a kettle. Some are deep enough to reach the water table and hold ponds. Walden Pond in Concord is one; many of the ponds on Cape Cod formed this way too. Others gradually fill with peat or remain dry much of the year, appearing as a dip in a field.
Larger reminders of the glacier dot Litchfield County, including the basin holding Bantam Lake and the boulders left in woods and fields. A kettle is easier to overlook. You might pass one for years without wondering why a single deep hollow sits in a stretch of flat land. This one is close enough to the Woodbury Green to walk over and have a look.
Cameron Gardella leads the walk Saturday at 10:00. It is a mile out and back on easy ground, about an hour. The walk is free, but Flanders asks you to call to register. Park near the corner of School Street and Judson Avenue, and look for where the ground drops.
Wednesday the 16th
Litchfield Community Center, Litchfield – September Family Dinner. Pizza from Bill's Mobile Pizza, veggie wedgies and dessert. Free, everyone welcome, register ahead. 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM COME TO DINNER
Thursday the 17th
Judea Garden, New Preston – Weed & Wine Thursdays. Pull weeds in the community garden, then stay for a glass. 124 Christian Street. 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM PULL SOME WEEDS
Friday the 18th
Alain White Field, Bantam – The Bantam Community Farmers Market. 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM SHOP LOCAL
Kent Farmers Market, Kent – Growers and makers at the Welcome Center on Railroad Street. 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM SHOP THE MARKET
Cornwall Town Green, Cornwall – Movie night on the Green. Hoppers, rated PG. Bring a blanket or a chair. 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM WATCH ON THE GREEN
Litchfield Community Center, Litchfield – Preview party for the Litchfield Garden Club's flower show, Celebrating Connecticut. Ticketed. The show itself is free and opens to the public Saturday morning. 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM SEE IT FIRST
Housatonic Valley Regional High School, Falls Village – The Salisbury Forum presents Miguel Cardona, the 12th U.S. Secretary of Education and former Connecticut education commissioner, on what young adults and the people teaching them are up against now. Free. 7:30 PM HEAR THE FORUM
White Memorial Conservation Center, Litchfield – Star Party with the Litchfield Hills Amateur Astronomy Club. A talk in the A.B. Ceder Room, then, weather permitting, the telescopes at the observatory. Free. Kids under 16 with an adult. 8:00 PM LOOK UP
Saturday the 19th
Cornwall Village Green, Cornwall – The Cornwall COOP Farmers Market on Pine Street. 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM SHOP THE GREEN
Cornwall Village Green, Cornwall – Town-wide tag sale, set up on the Green alongside the market. 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM HUNT FOR TREASURE
Rattlesnake Preserve, West Cornwall – Terry Burke and Deb Bennett of the Cornwall Conservation Trust walk the fields and woods of the preserve, reading the stone walls, wolf trees and old foundations for what the land used to be. Part of the Housatonic Heritage Walks. Park at the Rattlesnake Road entrance near Cogswell Road. Register on the Trust's site. Ticks. 10:00 AM READ THE WALLS
Manville Kettle, Woodbury – Flanders volunteer Cameron Gardella walks the kettle at School Street and Judson Avenue, the first land Flanders ever held. A mile out and back, easy, about an hour. Free, call to register. 10:00 AM WALK THE KETTLE
The Wish House, West Cornwall – The West Cornwall Farm Market. 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM MEET THE GROWERS
Litchfield Community Center, Litchfield – Celebrating Connecticut, the Litchfield Garden Club's flower show. Floral designs and horticulture built around the state's old trades: brassmaking, clockmaking, hatmaking, shipbuilding, silversmithing, tobacco. Connecticut field pumpkins. Free. 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM SEE THE SHOW
Steep Rock Preserve, Washington Depot – Steep Rock Association's annual community picnic, a tradition of more than fifty years. Food, lawn games, the whole town. 2 Tunnel Road. RSVP appreciated. 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM JOIN THE PICNIC
Hopkins Vineyard, Warren – Market Street Uncorked. Twenty-five local makers set up above Lake Waramaug, with a cookout, Rhythm City playing and Hopkins wine by the glass. 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM SHOP THE VINEYARD
Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, Torrington – The Plein Air Litchfield Collectors Soiree. About 150 paintings made across the county this week, judged by Stephanie Plunkett of the Norman Rockwell Museum and for sale. VIP preview at 3:00, $100. General admission at 4:00, $50, with food from Carlos Perez of Good News Cafe and a Litchfield Distillery tasting. 855 University Drive. 3:00 PM – 7:00 PM SEE THE WEEK'S WORK
The Cornwall Library, Cornwall – Opening reception for Dual Vision, landscape photographs by Lazlo Gyorsok and Jack Kearney. Gyorsok has been photographing Cornwall for decades, and his pictures are the ones on the town website. 30 Pine Street. 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM SEE THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Infinity Hall, Norfolk – NRBQ. Sixty years in, Terry Adams still at the keys. Doors at 7:00. 8:00 PM HEAR THE Q
Sunday the 20th
Across the county – Last day of Plein Air Litchfield. The painters have been working roadsides and fields from Kent to Goshen since the 12th. All day FIND THE PAINTERS
Litchfield Community Center, Litchfield – Writers in the Wild. Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus and nearly forty other books, on Of Time and Turtles, presented with Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy. Suggested $10, which also gets one adult into the Conservancy Saturday or Sunday from 10:00 to 4:00. 3:00 PM HEAR SY MONTGOMERY
That is the week's cut. The full list, close to two hundred events across the county, is on the website.
A few poll respondents mentioned they didn’t know the Ledger was on Instagram! It is. Photographs of the county between issues, plus events that don’t make the newsletter.
Show your business to thousands of Litchfield locals. Email Patrick at patrick@litchfieldledger.com.
