2026
May 2: Spring Cleaning & Re-opening
Join other Toolshed members for our annual Spring cleaning, where we dust off the trailer, organize tools, and add introduce some new tools to the inventory
July 11:Catskill Repair Cafe
Bring your broken items to be fixed, and learn new skills togethe with your neighbors. More info here, or follow us on Facebook.
August 14–16: Japanese Knotweed Craft: Biodesign, Stewardship, & Ecosocial Practice
at Sugar Maples Center for the Arts; register here
This workshop focuses on creative uses for itadori, aka “Japanese knotweed,” including dyes, marquetry, bioleather, and biocomposites. Working with the Sugar Maples campus landscape, participants will get hands-on experience in biomaterials techniques. In connection with the Streambank research project, focused on non-chemical management methods and uses of the plant’s dried biomass to support ongoing ecological restoration, we will learn best practices and new approaches to ecological stewardship, drawing from both traditional and emerging fields of agroecology, biodesign, regenerative agriculture, biocultural restoration, queer ecologies, and critical ethnobotany.
Workshops coming soon! Sign up for updates below.
Project Streambank
This new ecological restoration project, in collaboration with Greene County Soil & Water Conservation District and Deurendis, supports critical riparian ecosystems by removing itadori (aka “Japanese knotweed”) and planting varieties of the Salix genus (willow), while exploring experimental uses of both plants through a network of designers, craftspersons, artisans, and producers. We aim to show that effective long-term knotweed management can become self-sustaining and scalable through innovative uses of plant biomass in local circular economies, while restoring riparian buffers, sequestering carbon, and helping communities become more resilient. See more info here, and join our next Community Stewards Day on [2026 dates to be announced] in the beautiful Great Northern Catskills!
Repair Cafe events
A Repair Cafe is a free community event, where you bring your broken but beloved items and together with volunteer repair coaches, we fix them! And even if they can’t be fixed, we have a good time trying. Toolshed has partnered with Repair Cafe Columbia County Northeast and Catskill Repair Cafe offering our tools and fixing expertise, as well as hosting tool donation dropoffs, to events in the collaborating towns of New Lebanon, Chatham, Austerlitz, and Easy Nassau.