the scene (this coming weekend)

Things to do this weekend:

1. ALL WEEKEND: Gilded Pony Performance Festival
A few of my neighbors, Julie Rose (dancer and Pilates instructor) and Emily Dalton-Smith, are involved in performing and coordinating this performance festival, with two venues: the Arts Center in Troy and a church in Valley Falls. Helene Lesterlin of RPI's EMPAC is one of the curators. Last time she produced an event, everyone from Troy went to see dancers hanging from the rafters of the soon-to-be home of EMPAC at RPI and cooed about it for days...
Go to gildedpony.org for more information.

2. FRIDAY: Michael Eck at Caffe Lena, Saratoga, 7 p.m.
Michael Eck is a good guy. He writes reviews for the Times Union on occasion and does rock, pop, folk, country, and jazz himself on others. He describes himself (on his website, michaeleck.com) as "Woody Guthrie wired on black coffee." Who wouldn't like that?

3. SATURDAY: Troy Waterfront Farmers' Market, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
This is the third weekend the market is outside in its spring/summer venue, the Troy Marina (right between River Street Cafe and The Hedley Building on River Street, just north of Revolution Hall). Why shop the farmers' market? You know where your food is coming from. You can ask the vendors all sorts of questions (like, "How many gallons of milk can a goat produce on any given day?"), pet the rooster that perches atop Our Farm's sign, support fair trade for farmers, and know that most of the vendors don't use any sort of pesticides or funky chemicals on the food you're eating. There are no steroids involved.
Things I recommend buying (that I buy for my daughter and husband): whole milk from Gumaer Farms Dairy in Stuyvesant Falls, summer cheddar cheese from Adirondack Cheese, tomatoes from the best tomato vendor ever yet whose name escapes me (they grow hydroponic tomatoes all year in a greenhouse, and their tomatoes taste like a slice of juicy heaven!), pottery (a good wedding gift, I've been told) from Saratoga Pottery, greeting cards designed by Kristine Dominichini's Green Studio in Troy, and all sorts of hot, ready-to-eat curry concoctions from Greenwich's Thunder Mountain Curry.