Sing Out and Get Your Hands Dirty at the Hillsdale Workshop Experience

In the hills of eastern Columbia County, spring arrives with blossoms, birdsong and an invitation to get your hands dirty, your mind engaged, and your creativity inspired. The Workshop Experience Weekend in Hillsdale is a two-day dive into making, cooking, singing, and storytelling, led by a thoughtful cohort of local creatives who believe learning should be beautiful, communal, and deeply rooted in place. Now in its fifth year, the Hillsdale Workshop Alliance will once again open the doors of its studios, kitchens, barns, and gardens on May 10–11 for this curated celebration of craft and connection.

The Alliance is a collective of local businesses and cultural stakeholders that includes Alliance co-founder Matthew White an interior designer and proprietor of Hillsdale General Store and HGS Home Chef, gardening writer Margaret Roach, and Paul Ricciardi of the Ancram Center for the Arts, among others. The event serves as an annual capstone to individual workshop programming throughout the year.

“This isn’t about just filling a schedule,” says White. “Everyone involved is committed to delivering high-quality learning experiences that are relevant to our region. It’s not just about craft—it’s about curiosity, community, and place.”

Since its launch five years ago, the event has grown to draw more than 1,000 attendees, with many visitors booking multiple sessions and spending the full weekend moving between workshops, garden tours, and businesses on Hillsdale’s Rockwellian Main Street. Some of the weekend’s most popular events, like mushroom foraging with John Wheeler and the garden tours of Margaret Roach and Peter Bevacqua & Stephen King (not that one), are already sold out. Organizers highly encourage those interested to register ASAP.

Choral facilitator Kenter Davies is coming to the Workshop Experience for the first time.

An Eclectic Slate in an Elegant Space

This year’s program includes returning favorites as well as new standouts. Among the headliners is Dan Pelosi, a viral food personality and New York Times contributor who will teach a pasta workshop at HGS Home Chef. While the kitchen store runs workshops all year, this event brings in the heavy hitters.

“We turn up the volume for this weekend,” says White. “We’ve hosted over 500 workshops since we opened, but this one feels special. Everyone puts on their best Sunday hat .”

James Beard Award-winning authors Amy Chaplin and Tamar Adler will cohost a talk on whole food cooking at the shop as well. But the events aren’t all about food. In Blacksmithing: Forging Hearts with Marsha Trattner, attendees will learn traditional blacksmithing methods to craft personalized forged hearts, no prior experience required. Additionally, Botanical Bundle Dyeing with Hannah Ross teaches participants how to naturally dye a silk scarf using local spring plants, offering a hands-on introduction to natural dyeing suitable for all ages and skill levels. These workshops, among others, provide valuable opportunities for experiential learning in a picturesque setting.

 The Art of Bonsai with Matt Puntigam, of Dandy Farmer, provides an introduction to bonsai techniques, covering essentials like repotting, watering, soil composition, and pruning, making it ideal for beginners.

“It comes down to getting your hands in the dirt and working with nature,” says Puntigam, who will hold his workshop at Taconic Ridge Farm. “You literally can’t be on your phone when your hands are covered in soil. It’s a return to one of the most natural ways we know to deal with overstimulation.”

Though he doesn’t overtly market his workshop as therapeutic, Puntigam sees clear emotional and physical benefits: “There are so many examples of attendees coming in flustered—and by the end, they’re smiling, talking, laughing. There’s a visible change in their physical tension.”

He also emphasizes bonsai’s quiet challenge to our modern obsession with instant gratification. “You’re working toward a vision that might take four or five years to realize,” Puntigam explained. “It’s humbling. You can control a lot of variables, but in the end, it’s a living thing. You adapt, you reassess, and sometimes you change your entire plan.”

The class also makes full use of its picturesque surroundings. Puntigam notes the Japanese concept of “borrowing the landscape,” using the natural setting to inspire and inform miniature tree arrangements. “I can refer to the edge of a field where the handworked land meets the forest,” he says. “That liminal space teaches you how to think about transitions in bonsai, too—light, shadow, topography—it’s all part of the classroom.”

Permission to Find your Voice

A new addition to the lineup organizers say they are excited for is music facilitator Kenter Davies’s experiment in communal singing:, What a Wonderful World, One Day Choir.

“These aren’t trained vocalists—it’s for anyone who loves to sing,” says event organizer Jim Carden, owner of Taconic Ridge Farm, where the choir will gather. “It’s about the courage to open your mouth and raise your voice with others. People leave feeling connected and uplifted.”

A leader with the Gaia Music Collective, Davies has facilitated dozens of community singing events in Brooklyn and New York City, but Hillsdale marks his first time bringing the workshop into a serene, rural setting.

“I honestly don’t think I’ve led a choir in a quiet, nature-filled space before,” Davies says. “That’s kind of why I chose ‘What a Wonderful World.’ So much of that song is about the beauty of the natural world, and to be able to sing it outside, under the trees, in such a beautiful place—I’m so excited for what that combination does to the nervous system. Just to bring some calm.”

The choir, Davies emphasizes, is for absolutely everyone—no training or sheet music required. Participants can learn by ear from vocal demos and then gather to sing together. “It’s about creating a space where people can rewrite the story they have around their voice,” Davies says. “You don’t have to define yourself as good or bad. If you sing one note, you’re a singer now.”

The experience includes warmups, small group interactions, open discussions about the meaning of the lyrics, and a welcoming, lightly structured environment. “It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence,” says Davies. “Mistakes are welcome. Everything is an invitation. If someone wants to sing at the top of their lungs, they can. If they want to quietly share something personal during the lyric reflection, they can do that, too.”

The event falling on Mother’s Day weekend is especially meaningful to Davies. “My mom is coming,” he says with pleasure. “We’re going to sing together—and then take in some of the other workshops. That’s pretty special.”

Hillsdale is for Mothers

The entire weekend will include a number of nods to Mother’s Day with themed offerings. Trattner’s iron roses and hearts, for example, are intended to make a great gift. The storytelling session at the Ancram Center for the Arts will center on maternal narratives. “It’s not a hard theme,” Carden says, “but there’s a warm, emotional thread running through a lot of what’s being offered.”

While many workshops take place in barns, studios, and gardens, all venues have been chosen for their aesthetic appeal and functionality. “You’re not stuck in some windowless conference room,” White says. “You’re surrounded by beauty and purpose.”

Even as it grows, the Workshop Experience Weekend has attempted to retain the intimacy and integrity that inspired its creation. “Every year, we hear from attendees who thought they were just coming for one workshop,” says Carden, “and then realize it’s part of something bigger. Now people will plan a whole trip around it.”