Ooms

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The combination of grassland, forest, and pond habitats makes Ooms an excellent place for seeing various animals!

In the fields, you may spot pollinators like the Question Mark and Monarch butterflies feeding on milkweed and other flowers. Listen closely and look into the tall grass, where rare grassland birds build their nests. These include the Eastern Meadowlark, the Savannah Sparrow, and the Bobolink, called the “shkaakws-awehleeshoosh” or “skunk bird” by the Munsee (the Mohican word has been lost). If you were standing in these fields centuries ago, you may have heard the bobolinks’ songs mixing with those of species that have become extremely rare including the Upland Sandpiper, Common Nighthawk, and now-extinct Heath Hen.

As you move closer to the water, you may find larger birds like the Great Blue Heron and Great Egret stalking the edges of the pond, or raptors like Osprey and Bald Eagles flying overhead. Sutherland Pond is also home to Snapping Turtles, Beavers, Muskrats, Bullfrogs, and Damselflies.

The plants you see in the rolling fields at Ooms are largely because of dedicated management by people! Without regular mowing, these fields would first become filled with shrubs, eventually turning into forests.

These fields have undergone many changes throughout the years. Centuries ago, the Mohican people would have cleared the fields with fire and grown crops like goosefoot and little barley, using tools like hoes made from the shoulder blades of deer and moose. Over the course of 2,000 years, eventually they transitioned to planting crops like eight row flint corn, pole beans, and pumpkins. More recently (in the 1950s), the fields were used for grazing dairy cattle. Since CLC purchased the property, it has been managed to create healthy grassland habitat through mowing and partnering with a local farmer who grazes cattle in some of the further fields.

In addition to the grasses, Ooms is home to several flowering plants. Milkweed provides a food source for caterpillars of the Monarch butterfly, and the Mohican people use “pihtookŭnahm” for food, fiber, and medicine. A related plant, Swamp Milkweed, or “Wáapahnpak -‘White fiber plant’” is especially prized and used to create ornate bags that held important objects.

The pond at Ooms empties into the Stony Kill (Kill is a Dutch word for stream), which was an important route for the Mohican people, who used a trail alongside the stream to travel from communities in the Kinderhook Creek to important winter hunting grounds in the upper Housatonic, known as “Pontoosuk – ‘Place of Winter Deer.’” These trails were narrow and sometimes carved up to a foot deep in the earth.

By the first half of the 18th century, the Van Rensselaer family claimed much of the upper Kinderhook Creek watershed and the upper Green River watershed as within their Lower Manor. The tract of land they claimed was large, spanning several counties all the way to the border with Massachusetts. They, and other Dutch patroons, relied on the labor of indentured people and enslaved Africans to manage these large tracts of land. Ships from the West India Company used the Hudson River as a way to transport enslaved peoples. Once manumitted, those original Black families continued to live, work, and create a vibrant community that survives to this day.

The Van Rensselaer land claim was hotly contested by the nearby Mohican descendants of the original sellers. They rightfully believed that the boundaries had been grossly exaggerated by the Van Rensselaers. The Mohican people were subject to genocide, coerced into assimilation, and forcibly removed from their homelands to what is now known as Wisconsin. They continue to retain their unbroken status as a Sovereign Native Nation. Despite removal, they continue to hold relationships with their homelands and settler communities.

In more recent history, the pond was a source of ice for harvesting, an important part of life in the turn of the century Hudson Valley. George Staats, known locally as “Ice Man,” purchased the farmhouse on the property in 1946 from the Sutherland family and began to harvest ice from the pond in the winter. There was a large icehouse along the western edge of Sutherland Pond where he stored the ice before selling it to the townsfolk. The practice of harvesting ice grew less popular after World War II, with the popularity of electrical refrigeration.

Eventually, the Ooms family came from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and purchased the property in 1951, beginning a dairy operation with 37 cows. When the property was acquired, there were dressing rooms for the old community town beach area on the northern edge of the pond. There are also remnants of an old apple orchard and old farm fencing on the northern edge of the pond. The walls of an old barn foundation remain along Rock City Road.

CLC worked with the Open Space Institute to purchase the property from the Ooms family in early 2001 and opened it to the public in 2004.