Forage Your Feast | A Mythic Catskills Adventure
November 22-24, 2019

Name: Forage Your Feast | A Mythic Catskills Adventure
Start: 2019-11-22T18:00:00-05:00
End: 2019-11-24T12:00:00-05:00
Location: Spillian

In this era of illusion, many of us are yearning for realness. For authenticity.

Come to the source and taste some as the Catskills brings in the fall harvest, on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, for your very own farm to table celebration. (This is as far from cranberries in a can as it gets…)

Spillian is proud to partner with Table to Farm Tours to invite you to come and taste – literally and metaphorically – the terroir of the Catskills and bring it back to your table for your holiday feast.

Join with us as we introduce you to an extraordinary group of farmers who love this land, in all of its beauty and its harshness, and produce food that tastes of all that the Catskills awaken in us. You’ll wander with the inspiring team from Table to Farm Tours to a hand-selected array of Catskills farms, offering the bounty of late fall on a custom designed private tour. Bring the flavors of the Catskills directly home to your celebrations; food tastes different when you not only know where it comes from, but also when you’ve met the folks who have brought it into being.

Forage Your Feast at Spillian. It’s Mythic. Local. Real.

Reserve Now!

Mythic Catskills Adventures

Spillian’s Mythic Catskills Adventures are an intersection with the essence of the Catskills: the forests, the mountains, the people, the deep stories that make this place so compelling.

Each gathering celebrates a facet of this gem-like place: its food, its fish and streams, its ringing summer, its snow-spangled winters, its flowing creative life force.

Come for a weekend of grand adventure. Feast. Explore. Hear the great stories and share your own. Revel in the mythic possibility of the Catskills and find where it sings in your life – and then bring that song back home with you.

Forage Your Feast Schedule

Friday
An evening of Catskills Flavors

• A robust farm-to-table charcuterie, including local meats and cheeses, spring greens, hummus, relishes, chutneys, and more from our neighboring farmers and food producers, along with red onion & leek tarts and salad.
• A tasting of Catskills ciders: fresh and hard, and an exploration into the extraordinary history of the apple in the Catskills.
• Tales, real and mythic, about farmed and wild food in the Catskills, around the fireplace.

Saturday
Foraging Your Feast on the Farms

• Begin your day with a Catskills breakfast featuring eggs from Spillian Farm’s ridiculous chickens.
• A custom Catskills farm tour with Table to Farm Tours, tasting and gathering the foods that speak to your soul and taste buds to inspire your holiday cooking. You’ll be wandering to Barber’s Farm, Sap Bush Hollow Farm, Scrumpy Ewe Cider, Buck Hill Farm, and Harpersfield Cheese. Looking for the perfect turkey for Thanksgiving? You can pre-order it from Sap Bush Hollow. We’ll email you instructions when you register! (Please note you need to register for the tour in addition to the weekend if you’d like to go.)
• A lunch at one of our local farm-to-table cafés.
• A cocktail hour and mixology contest featuring Catskills spirits.
• A six-course local feast from Spillian’s chef Christian Van Etten, featuring flavors from the farms you visited during the day.
• Storytelling of the history and legends of the Catskills and its food, and how it lands our yearning for a sense of place.

Sunday
Foraging Wild Woods Flavors

• A Spillian breakfast.
• A gentle guided moving meditation inviting you to savor a sense of place in the Catskills.
• Foraging on Spillian’s property and a cooking lesson with Chef Christian.
• A gathering to sample your culinary masterpiece.

The Saturday Feast

A family style feast around our extraordinary mahogany dining table, all dressed for the season. This table is a true place of convivium, where tales are topped, ideas are birthed, and friendships created. Chef Christian Van Etten’s menu for the evening:

• Warm Frizee salad with Fennel, Apple, and Goat Cheese

• House Made Butternut Squash Tortolloni with Pine sauce and Pesto

• Roasted Venison with Roasted Beet, Carmelized Onion Chutney

• Three Sisters Bowl with Hominy, Beans, and Squash

• Roast Quail stuffed with Sausage, Apple & Chestnut over a Bed of Pureed Roasted Rutabagas

• Maple Frozen Custard with Candied Bacon served over Cornbread Fingers

Pricing

Join us for the full weekend, or on Saturday for the tour and dinner, or simply for the evening on Saturday!

Forage Your Feast Weekend For One: $425 until November 10! $525 after that.
Per person, single room occupancy. Weekend fee includes all sessions at Spillian, all meals; tastings; mixology contest, foraging session, moving meditation; cooking class; and lodging at Spillian. Guided Table to Farm tour with Saturday lunch is an additional $105 per person; please register for this on the registration page if you’d like to join us. Evening cash bar, tax, on-farm purchases, and gratuities not included. Click here to learn more about our splendid guest rooms! Check in Friday any time after 3 PM.

Forage Your Feast Weekend For Two: $595 until November 10! $695 after that.
For the couple, double room occupancy. Weekend fee includes all sessions including all meals; tasting; moving meditation; cooking class; and lodging at Spillian. Guided Table to Farm tour with Saturday lunch is an additional $105 per person; please register for this on the registration page if you’d like to join us. Evening cash bar, tax, on-farm purchases, and gratuities not included. Click here to learn more about our splendid guest rooms! Check in Friday any time after 3 PM.

Saturday Table to Farm Tour: $105
Per person. A custom Catskills farm tour with Table to Farm Tours, tasting and gathering the foods that speak to your soul and taste buds to inspire your holiday cooking. You’ll be wandering to Barber’s Farm, Sap Bush Hollow Farm, Scrumpy Ewe Cider, Buck Hill Farm, and Harpersfield Cheese. Lunch included. On-farm purchases, tax, and gratuities not included.

Saturday Evening Feast & Festivities: $65 per person
Join us for a Catskills spirits mixology contest, and a feast fit for kings. Cocktails begin at 5 PM, dinner at 7 PM. Includes your mixology masterpiece cocktail and dinner. Cash bar, tax and gratuities not included. Reservations required.

What to Bring With You
We’re fairly casual here in the mountains! If you’re going on the farm tour, a pair of boots is a grand idea, as mountain farms can be muddy. If you’re up for a moving meditation class, please bring something you can easily move in. November in the mountains is beautiful but can be chilly, so make sure you bring layers with you! Other than that…a camera if you’d like, and a willingness for adventure.

Reserve Now!

About Table to Farm Tours

Our goal is to connect the dots for you, curating tours to a variety of local producers from creameries to tea blenders, veggie farms to hard cideries, creating an experience you’ll remember long after you’ve visited the Catskills. Hop in our comfortable van and we’ll take you on full day tour or come along for an evening of amazing libations and excellent farm-to-table food. You’ll have opportunities to meet individual farmers and makers, hear their stories, learn about their philosophies, tour their site, and taste some amazing food and drink. Learn more here.

Have You Joined Our Mythic Catskills Adventure email list? Join now and be the first to know about upcoming events and special early pricing!

Jenna Gaudio

12:55 09 Sep 23

Spillian is a magical place. You see it the very first time you turn onto the grounds and drive down a long, lush road that climbs to reveal a moody Victorian estate at the top. You feel the magic in the ferns, flowers, and trees that surround the area - creating the feeling of mystical protection from the rest of the world. You know this place is magic when you meet the owners, who ooze creativity and kindness with their every word of excitement for what they do. The building is unlike any other, rich with artwork and collected items from around the world. The meadow, where people meet around the fire, get married, and dance under the stars, is clearly crafted with thoughtfulness and rarity that leaves an impression on anyone who's lucky enough to experience it.The food by Spillian's Chef was impossibly flawless meal after meal - and after being diagnosed with an autoimmune and food allergies a year before the wedding, I didn't really make it easy on him. We had a divine welcome party taco bar, a Mediterranean rehearsal dinner, a special request burrata bar at cocktail hour, fresh, local summer dishes for the wedding dinner, and a to-die-for goodbye brunch.Not only are the owners creative and kind, but they are also keen on logistics, communication, and collaboration to keep the stress down. It was forecasted to storm terribly off-an-on all weekend, but we had gone all-in on a fully outdoor wedding. They watched the weather and stayed in contact with our vendors in case we had to restructure the wedding inside, but the day of everyone felt we should make the attempt outside - and we got very lucky the weather held up! They are creative problem solvers and will go above and beyond to help make the day go smoothly. Our Wedding cake vendor fell through days before the wedding, and when I asked if they could make a watermelon wedding cake so we could still have that wedding cake moment, they made it happen - and it ended up being an incredibly memorable part of the day.Pro tips:-Definitely book it for the weekend and give yourself an extra day to walk the grounds, and sit on the porch.-It is a historic building and operates as such, including no A/C, so be aware/prepare for that. Climate change is real and it was much hotter the weekend of our wedding than was typical/expected.- Sign up for their newsletter to get updates on creative workshops, dinner parties, etc. that the owners host throughout the year. We attended a dinner party before we got married and it was so fun to meet locals and other couples who had been married there previously. It's a wonderful community that shares a deep love for Spillian and all it has to offer.

Heidi Liou

14:48 27 Aug 23

Came here for a beautiful wedding, and stayed for two nights total. The staff was amazing and incredibly nice! Highly recommend. Lots of wonderful memories were made.

15:49 25 Jun 23

Excellent service!! Beautiful venue!! Food was delicious!

Jonathan Moore

16:39 02 Jan 23

Had a chef selected four course meal and spent the night. Wonderful food, wonderful staff, and a magical stay at a unique historical venue.

nancy cottrell

22:26 13 Nov 22

Just returned from my daughter’s wedding! Wow!! It was magical! Spillian gave my daughter the wedding she always dreamed of❤️ Thank you to everyone at Spillian! Truly a wonderful place !

Roza Goltser

02:56 26 Oct 22

Magic in the mountains! That's what Spillian brings to you. If you want your wedding to be in nature it is the perfect place for you. The grounds are stunning with huge bonefire truly makes you feel like you are camping with luxury. Perfect for groom and bridal rooms to get ready on location. Not to mention the estate itself is like from a different area. It was built in the early 1880's!! Absolutely glorious!!

Julia Masotti

22:51 05 Jul 22

We were lucky enough to get married at Spillian in June of 2022, and words truly cannot describe how magical and joyful the experience was. I work in the wedding industry, so as soon as my now-husband and I got engaged, I knew we needed to tie the knot somewhere off the beaten path. We didn’t want cookie cutter, pre-planned menus, or generic banquet halls. Spillian was the first (and only!) venue we looked at- from the winding drive up the forest road to the main house, we felt the magic and we were hooked.   Mark, Leigh, and the entire staff at Spillian treat you like family from first meeting. Whenever we went up to visit, whether for tastings or for a site visit, we were greeted with the biggest hugs and smiles. We designed our menu with Chef Christian, a French-inspired feast featuring the best of all local farms, and our guests are still talking about how incredible all the food was. A wedding at Spilling is so much more than just that; it’s a weekend-long celebration with all your nearest and dearest.We stayed in the estate house from Friday to Sunday with our wedding party, and the house itself is fabulous- beautifully appointed, comfortable, and clean. We had our taco bar rehearsal dinner on Friday night, followed by a karaoke party (Mark and Leigh will really help you make whatever your dreams are happen!), our wedding in the woods on Saturday (complete with a bonfire and s’mores), and a send-off brunch on the lawn on Sunday. Mark, Leigh, and their staff are all so intuitive, quick to solve any problems we ran into and preternaturally able to anticipate any problems before they even arose.   I could go on and on about how wonderful this place is, but you get the idea. It’s truly magic, and Spillian will forever hold such a special place in our hearts.

Jennifer Sauer

20:01 24 Jul 21

Yeah, what they said! Spillian is a perfect venue for weddings, family and friend celebrations, or just to visit for a special event. The mansion is absolutely amazing with antiques and stories in every room and corner. The grounds truly are a beautiful and peaceful nature-filled feast for the eyes and imagination. The hosts are inviting, fun and funny, and super attentive to your needs, comfort and questions and I made it a point to chat with staff when possible and all were delightful and helpful. After a great visit, the hosts pointed me to a great hiking trail in Catskills. Many thanks for a memorable weekend!