Bits from Brambleberry

A romantic Valentine's weekend at Brambleberry

2012-01-21T15:10:00.000-08:00

We love Valentine's Day here at Brambleberry. It's one of the most fun weekends of the year for us. Each of the first three years our B&B was open, there was a marriage proposal among the guests. It's fun to be a part of such a special occasion.
But you don't have to be planning on proposing this Valentine's Day to have a reason for a romantic getaway at Brambleberry.
Saturday, Feb. 11 we have a special romantic Valentine's dinner for guests who would like to participate. We'll even make some special preparations for your romantic holiday if you'd like. With a few days notice, we can arrange to have flowers, candy or any our special romance packages waiting in your room upon your arrival. You don't even have to lift a finger -- except to dial the phone or book online!
There will be a chocolate treat each night for guests to indulge in. Enjoy a log fire in the library while you sip on a complimentary glass of wine. If you'd like to cross country ski or sled, we suggest that you stay for two days to have enough time to enjoy the winter recreation.
If you have other requests to make your weekend special, please ask us and we'll do what we can.

One of Wisconsin's best eco inns

2011-12-23T15:39:00.000-08:00

We were thrilled to be promoted this past year as one of the best “eco-elegant” inns in the state by the Wisconsin Department of Tourism. It was very gratifying to have our efforts for our accomplishments recognized.

But even if we had not been recognized we would still be doing everything the same way we do. We were “green” long before Travel Green Wisconsin was ever created. Conserving resources and saving money have always been a part of both of our lives, even growing up.

Because we grew up on farms, living off the land, we are much more connected to the land than people in town or in the city. You have to be a good steward of your land and its resources if it is to remain productive and sustainable. Our farm B&B is one of the most diversified if not THE most diversified in Wisconsin. We raise pigs, sheep and Highland beef using natural, organic methods. We grow and harvest crops to feed these animals. We also direct market slaughter lambs.

Our one-acre fruit and vegetable garden produces most of our family’s food as well as the B&B in summer. We’re the only B&B in the state that offers homegrown harvest dinners throughout the growing season.

Late winter we produce maple syrup on the farm, in between delivering newborn lambs. We’ve established a home vineyard for winemaking in addition to our strawberry, blackberry, raspberry and rhubarb country wines.

This year we added an energy efficient heat pump for air conditioning. We heat our B&B using dead trees harvested from our woodlands – a 100 percent renewable resource. Our lovely nature trails teeming with wildlife provide the ultimate green experience for guests.

We also do things everyone – even people without land – can do, such as: using energy efficient lighting, turning lights off when not in use, recycling garbage, using energy efficient appliances, larger but fewer loads of laundry, mulching gardens, combining errands to cut down on auto mileage, install energy efficient doors, windows, siding and insulation. Eat healthier. Shop local. Buy used when possible – shop thrift and resale shops. Don’t use paper plates and disposable Styrofoam cups. Wash your dishes instead. Shut your computer off when not in use. To save more, unplug appliances not in use when it’s practical to do so. Compost non-meat food scraps.

Being ecologically green leads to savings of another important $green$.

There be Highlands here!

2011-12-18T08:48:00.000-08:00

Running a farm is expensive. Equipment costs are outrageous. Fuel is costly and is needed to run tractors, to plant corn and cut, rake and bale hay. Little by little we have invested in fencing, livestock shelters, water pipes and a pump near the animals and buying sheep and pigs.

As an English/Scottish style B&B, we thought our Suffolk and purebred Scottish Blackface sheep were great additions to the farm. For a few years we’ve wanted to add grass-fed beef to our operation. More specifically, Scottish Highland cattle. These beautiful, shaggy beasties are rugged and largely self-sufficient. They will eat scrub brush and less than ideal hay other animals would turn their nose up at. The animals grow slower and take longer to mature than other beef breeds. Their meat is leaner and healthier than other beef.

This fall we took the leap. We located a small herd for sale a reasonable distance from us. It took a month to find a trucker that was able to transport the cows for us. We bought three pregnant cows and a bull calf, which we plan on selling or trading for another bull.

The cows arrived at night, after dark. We had waited for these animals for several weeks and had desired them for a few years. We were excited that they were finally here. It was like the scene in the movie “Star Trek IV” where Scotty beams the whales and the water into the makeshift aquarium in the cargo bay of the stolen Klingon spaceship. He excitedly declares to Admiral Kirk and the bridge crew: “There be whales here!” With the same enthusiasm we thought “There be Highlands here!”

Horror of horror, only one minute later they were GONE! As they stepped off the cattle truck, Lucky, the very naughty farm dog, couldn’t resist chasing them. Immediately they spooked and burst through the barnyard’s barbed wire fence, which they could not see in the dark. We were sickened. Those poor animals were wandering the 600 acres of the farm at large, not familiar with the lay of the land. We prayed they wouldn’t breech the fences of the perimeter of the farm.

A neighbor had other cattle grazing on the farm as well. We hoped they would hang out with them, eat at their feed bunk and be sorted out when the other animals left for their own home after the pastures froze. Alas, they did not.

We drove around the farm, looking for them without success. Chris and his dad walked the fence lines, looking for signs of escape. We distributed fliers throughout the neighborhood. Finally, 10 days later we sighted them in a heavily wooded valley. Since there are numerous springs and a creek on the property they had water.

Deer hunting week we managed to contain them in a fenced corn field where they could eat corn stalks and be safe from gunfire. It proved impossible for the two of us to move them to a series of lanes and corrals leading to the barn. They just wouldn’t go through the right gate without circling back around us.

Now that we have snow cover, we are feeding hay bales, bringing them closer to the corrals and buildings each day. These are skittish Scottish!

But soon we will have them close enough that with the help of several other people we can get them through the series of pens and gates and finally to the safety of the small barn, where they were unloaded. From there we can also observe them from the house. The bull calf will be removed and share digs with the sheep until he is needed, leaving the cows to have their calves in the safety of the barn and barnyard this spring.

In the summer they will graze the ridgetop nature trail. We will continue to keep the female offspring of Flora, Skye and Heather, slowly growing our herd. Most of the bull calves will be destined to become gourmet beef on our dinner table or marketed directly to consumer.

A magical winter wonderland

2011-12-11T07:12:00.001-08:00

It's definitely winter at Brambleberry Bed and Breakfast. Large, heavy snowflakes fell the first weekend of December and coated the trees on our farm. With little wind and cold temperatures, for several days just looking out the window gave you a sense of being in a magical winter wonderland.
Guests sometimes ask us what winters are like since we live at the end of the road and we can get snowed in. We tell them it's wonderful.
With a four-wheel drive truck and a town that plows the road, we're never snowed up for long. But when you have four freezers full of food and a crackling log fire to keep you warm, watching the snow fall is very peaceful.
Here are some photos of our farm after the recent snow.

The road leading to Brambleberry Bed and Breakfast.

A bald eagle perched in a tree doesn't seem to mind the snow.

Our bluff hiking trail (above and below) was a path less traveled.

Brambleberry framed by snow-covered trees.

Mr. Bingley, our Suffolk wether, stands beside Pixie, a crossbred ewe lamb.

A hillside winter scene.

A wonderful Iowa winery

2011-11-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

Nan Smith and some her crew bottling Red Fox wine at the Stone Cliff Winery.

As bed and breakfast proprietors, we don’t get a lot of vacation time. We do try to get away for a few days each year, usually during the middle of the week when Brambleberry is not open and during a time of year when garden and animal chores are a little less intensive.

Recently we did a three-day trip and headed to Dubuque, Iowa and Galena, Illinois before heading home. Since we enjoy wine, we always try to visit a winery. So we picked Stone Cliff Winery in Dubuque.

Stone Cliff is located along the Mississippi riverfront in the historic Star Brewery building. The winery grows grapes on a vineyard outside of the city and makes its wines in the Star Brewery building, which features a comfortable tasting room with a decorative bar.

We happened to luck out the evening we stopped because winemaker Nan Smith, who owns the winery with her husband Bob, was relaxing after a long day. As we sampled Stone Cliff wines, we talked about how we make homemade wine ourselves and that we write a weekly wine column for area newspapers.

Nan gave us a tour of the winery, which includes a fantastic reception area available for parties or meetings. She invited us back the next morning so we could observe the bottling of Red Fox wine, one of their estate-grown wines.

We stopped in after staying overnight at a Dubuque bed and breakfast and watched Nan and the crew bottle and label the wines. Nan even let Sherry run the labeling machine on a few bottles.

Stone Cliff is a great place and we recommend that you visit if you get a chance. Not only was it our first time observing a bottling machine, it was also the first time that we sampled wine that had been poured through an aerator, a device that helps red wine to breathe faster.

Of course we purchased a few bottles of wine to take home. Also coming home with us was a black sequined “What happens at the winery, stays at the winery” t-shirt that caught Sherry’s eye.

Enjoying fall rituals

2011-09-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

Fall is here and along with it comes some of our favorite fall rituals.
1. The first apple pie of the season. We have a number of apple trees that produce from August through October. We always look forward to making that first pie with our own apples. In early August we have Lodi and the heirloom apple Duchess. Later in September we pick our favorite – crisp Cortlands. Also in September we pick the hardy climate Harralson, Northwestern Greening and the huge Wold River apple. In October the sweet Honey Gold apple ripens last. We freeze plenty for sauces, crisps and pies. We have new Honeycrisp trees that will bear in a few years.
2. The first pot of chili. When there is a chill in the night air, it’s time to make that first pot of chili. We let it simmer all day for the spices to fully develop. It’s always better when we use our own tomatoes from the garden. We’ve been canning juice to take us through the winter.
3. Fall decorating. The abundance of our garden supplies the majority of our natural fall décor. Squashes, pumpkins and colorful gourds all make the house more festive. A large corn shock graces the front porch to welcome guests. We scour the woods for bittersweet and bright red hawthorn branches.
4. Lastly, fall baking fills the house with the wonderful fragrances of the season. The aroma of apple and pumpkin pies and baked goods add a warm, spicy, homey welcome when you walk in the door.
Welcome fall and all the rituals that it brings.

Moving a piece of history

2011-09-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

We have always had a deep sense of appreciation for history. We wake up every day in the farmhouse that was built by Chris’s great-grandparents. We enjoyed every minute of visiting cathedrals and old homes in England, some of them going back to the 1100s.
It’s in that spirit that we’ve embarked on a historical journey of sorts. A pioneer cabin – actually two cabins that were joined together – will join our farm sometime next year.
This summer we spent time working with the Preservation Alliance of La Crosse to carefully mark and label the logs, tear down the cabin and move the logs. It’s been a lot of work.
The La Crosse Tribune published a story about the process. In the story Chris was quoted as saying that we intend to use the cabin as a sugar shack. A wife of a cousin said those words drew some snide comments from co-workers who thought we were expanding our B&B business into some sort of cabin of ill-repute!
Sugar shack is the term that is also used for the building where maple sap is boiled down, which is what we intend to use the cabin for. We may also have some historically appropriate furnishings.
We hope to put together a family history of the cabin. After the story was published, we had many people come forth who grew up in the cabin or had connections to it.

The cabin was located about 40 miles from us in Monroe County. As of late August, with the help of our friend Carl Wallace at Village Lumber in West Salem, the logs are safely stored in our shed. Our goal is to prepare a site for the cabin next year and start the reconstruction process.
We’ll provide updates on that project next year!

Book a harvest dinner with your Saturday stay

2011-08-14T19:11:00.000-07:00

The garden got off to a slow start this spring. It stayed cold well beyond mid-May. But finally the garden is at peak production.
Daily we are harvesting potatoes, tomatoes, beets, carrots, cucumbers, beans, summer squash and herbs. Our first sweet corn is just ripening.
Brambleberry Bed and Breakfast is the only Wisconsin bed and breakfast that serves dinner for guests who book ahead. There's only 2-1/2 months left of our special harvest dinners and feasts that comprise of our own homegrown organic vegetables. Meat is either raised on the farm or sourced locally. We try to keep between zero and 30 miles per meal. The average U.S. meal has between 1,500 to 2,000 miles on it. At $20 to $30 a plate, this is a fantastic value for an organic dinner. The folks at Outstanding in the Field charge nearly $200 a plate for a similar dinner. Some of our peak fall festival or fall foliage weekends are filling up fast. So book now to reserve your chance to experience a homegrown meal first-hand.

Still plenty of summer to enjoy

2011-07-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

Once the 4th of July comes and goes, the rest of the summer seems to fly by. But there's still plenty of time to get out there and enjoy the many activities our area has to offer. Especially our local bike trails.
Bikers who stay at Brambleberry have much to choose from. We're a short drive to more than 500 miles of trails. The Trempealeau County bike loop comprises of 17 different scenic rides on 382 miles of paved backed roads with minimal traffic.
New additions this year include a stretch called "the majestic Trempealeau River basin." There's also a new section through Amish country, between Whitehall and Blair. The Trempealeau bike loop is the largest connected bicycle trail system in the United States.
We're also a short drive to the Elroy-Sparta and La Crosse River and other great state and river trails for bikers who prefer the crushed limestone surface.
Bikers also appreciate that they can make dinner arrangements with us and not have to head out in the evening after a long day of biking. This also allows bikers to park in Trempealeau and take a few days to do the loops without having to return to their car.

Sheep shearing time

2011-05-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

Recently we had our sheep sheared – a good job to have out of the way.
Allen, a local Amish farmer with a few years of experience, does the job for us. Sheep shearers are hard to find and we consider ourselves fortunate that he is willing to do the job. He speedily and skillfully shears them, resulting in only a few nicks to the animals.
The first year we had our sheep; Sherry thought she could master the task, provided Chris restrained the animal. After 25 years of cutting hair on humans, Sherry reasoned that it must be comparable to cutting children’s hair. Just work swiftly and be prepared for sudden movements.
WRONG!
The $300 professional clipper we bought – called “Turbo Clipper” by our vet – snapped a spring the first time we used it. (Apparently it was never set in the proper position when it left the factory.) Its long, wicked combs vibrated violently and could easily have cut off a finger, teat or other appendage. The ram looked nervous.
Allen’s clipper was being repaired when we approached him about shearing our flock. But he was willing to give our clipper a try. With another new set of combs and blades we purchased he was able to make the necessary adjustments. He had such control over the animals and expertly “peeled” the fleece right off them in short order. He had one slight mishap but the sheep recovered nicely from her wound. It was clear to us he could do a much better job than we could.
Some people shear in the cold of February, before lambing. Supposedly the mother snuggles with and keeps her lambs warmer than she would with a thick layer of wool insulating her body heat from the lamb. You shouldn’t shear too close to lambing time because you can twist an umbilical cord or move a lamb fetus around too much as the ewes are handled.
We shear after everyone has given birth, when it’s warmer out. Some say the warmer lanolin makes it easier for the clipper blades to glide through the wool.
Unfortunately wool prices are low – at least for the wool type that our sheep have. We find that strange given the trend toward people wanting to use natural, renewable resources. Last year after paying shipping costs, we got a staggering check of $5.92 for 92 pounds of wool. It cost us $4 per sheep to shear. We had 15 sheep sheared. Alas, no government subsidy for us!
Our Scottish Blackface and Suffolk don’t have the right type of fleece for hand spinners. Their fleece is only used to make blankets and carpeting.
This year, because Allen wanted to shear on a Saturday, our weekend guests were able to witness the yearly event. In an interesting twist of fate, we actually had a guest who shears commercially so he and Allen had a lot to discuss and he offered Allen a few welcome tips.
For a few days after shearing there is some butting of heads and shoving around as the newly naked sheep try to re-establish their hierarchy. Everyone looks so much smaller and the new lambs look almost as big as their mothers.
The girls will be glad for their new haircuts, if it ever warms up this spring.

What do we on vacation: Remodel

2011-03-27T07:57:00.001-07:00

The old Victorian bathroom, left, was replaced with a remodeled version that includes an antique clawfoot tub to replace a tired cast iron tub, ceramic tile to replace the vinyl floor, new walls, new ceiling, new baseboard heater, new lights and fresh paint, of course. In other words, this bathroom was a total gut job!

Guests often ask us: What do you do when you’re on vacation? Actually, with so many animals to feed and the gardens to be tended, we rarely get away for more than a day or two each year. (No need to feel sorry for us, though, because anyone who has stayed here knows that as nice as Brambleberry is, one doesn’t need to go anywhere else if you live here.)

Even though we don’t usually go away on a vacation, we do take vacation. And what do we do with those vacation days? We remodel, make repairs and redecorate the bed and breakfast, of course. March is one of our slowest months of the year as occupancy goes and we’re busy delivering lambs. We’re also collecting maple sap to boil into sweet, 100 percent natural maple syrup. So it makes perfect sense to rip the house apart then, when we wouldn’t be turning away as many guests.

Last year we had a commercial kitchen installed so we could get a restaurant license. This makes us one of the few select inns in the state that may serve meals other than breakfast. This year we’re adding a double whirlpool to the Wedgwood room because the demand is there. Our whirlpool rooms are always the first to book. We’re also remodeling two bathrooms and a bedroom, which is going to be a future guest room this fall when our son no longer needs it. Then we will have five beautiful, comfortable, very individual rooms for guests to choose from.

Unfortunately, no remodeling project ever goes as planned. There are always things that happen that are unexpected. Delays and cost overruns always seem inevitable. It is always stressful to get through the project, which seems to extend forever. But it is so worth it to have it done. And it’s a necessary effort and expense that is part of owning a bed and breakfast.

All of this helps us deliver to our guests a high quality, peaceful, relaxing getaway in beautiful, comfortable surroundings. That’s something we find very rewarding.

A sweet weekend at Brambleberry

2011-03-06T07:02:00.001-08:00

Our philosophy at Brambleberry Farms is to live sustainably off the land, enjoying the bounties that nature provides.
One of the ways we do that is to make our own maple syrup from the trees on our farm. Brambleberry Bed and Breakfast will hold an open house from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 26.
This event is free and open to the public. We are a small producer of maple syrup and are starting our second season. We practice low-impact, labor intensive methods of collecting maple sap using bags on tree taps. The sap is manually collected, boiled down on a wood stove, and finished on a commercial gas range. The syrup is filtered and stored in glass jars.
The day’s events include sugar bush tours. Visitors can help collect the sap and watch the sap being boiled down into maple syrup. They may also tour the B&B and visit the newborn lambs on the farm. Enjoy coffee and baked goods featuring maple syrup.
Guests who book a room and stay overnight can enjoy our syrup with a pancake breakfast.
For more information about the open house, call (608) 525-8001.

Adventures in bottle feeding

2011-02-20T11:55:00.001-08:00

This is an update of our previous post. We had two sets of twin lambs born last week, but we ended up with one lamb being rejected by its mother.
There are lots of reasons that a ewe will reject its lamb, but we suspect this was due to the sharp teeth that the little ram had. We tried several times for the ewe to accept the lamb, but she bunted it around and wanted to have nothing to do with him.
About the only solution – after you use an emery board to file down the sharp teeth (which are obviously painful to the ewe’s udder) – is to restrain the ewe with a stanchion. That way she cannot use her head to knock the lamb around and she will eventually get used to the idea that the lamb is nursing from her again.
We have no such stanchion in our lamb barn (another project for Chris). We managed to hand-milk some colostrum from the ewe and we used a feeding tube to get it into the lamb’s stomach. Getting colostrum from the mother is vital for the survival of the lamb.
The first night the little guy spent in a straw-lined box in our bedroom so he could stay warm and so it was easier for us to start bottle-feeding and they need to be fed frequently right after birth. It was also important for his safety so he wouldn’t be knocked around by his mother or by the other ewe that gave birth, since he was trying to nurse off her too.
After the first night we took the lamb into a separate pen into the lamb barn and we fed him with lamb milk replacer about every four hours. He’s finally eating enough that we can feed him before we go to bed – about 11 p.m. – and then not until 5 a.m. or so.
Ideally we’d like to get to the point where he can suck from a specially-designed bottle that fits into a holder, but the scalawag (we call all our rams scalawag) is spoiled and wants to eat only from the baby bottle.
In another week we can introduce him to some solid food and hopefully he will be strong enough to join the rest of the flock. We let him run around on his side of the barn (which is secure) during the day but make sure he and the rest of the flock are locked inside during the night lest his baaing draw the attention of the coyotes that prowl our woods. He’s very vocal about when he thinks it’s time to eat!
It’s been a long week as both of us have had little sleep, but it will get better. And while we have late-night bottle feedings, at least we don’t have to change diapers!

2011 lambing season has begun

2011-02-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

Today (Feb. 13) marks the first lambs of the 2011 season.
Our Suffolk ewes – Kitty and Fanny – each had a set of twins. Kitty had ram lambs and Fanny had a male and a female. They were born about 10 a.m.
Sherry had been checking the ewes about every four hours for the past few days. She knew when the lambs were due because they were bred one day last fall when our Scottish Blackface ram Mr. Darcy broke through the fence and ravaged them. It was not the coupling that we sought since these are two of our best ewes. We wanted our purebred Suffolk ram Colonel Fitzwilliam to breed them.
We were fortunate that the weather took a turn in the past two days. Thursday morning we had 25-below-zero, which is not an ideal condition for lambing. Today the temperature is in the low 50s, so perhaps fortune has smiled upon us.
Both mothers and their lambs are in temporary pens, where the lambs can get a chance to nurse and the mother can eat free of interference from the other ewes. Since these are experienced mothers, we will probably keep in them in the pen only a couple of days, as long as the lambs appear to be eating and getting stronger.
It will be two more weeks before we expect the rest of the ewes to start giving birth. The first two weeks of March will be crazy. Last fall we expanded our sheep barn and Chris built about a dozen lamb pens, so we should have plenty of space.
Until then we can sleep through the night without having to make 2 a.m. visits to the barn.

Finding the Christmas spirit

2011-01-01T13:10:00.000-08:00

The shadow of twilight descended upon my farm as the sun slipped below the snow-covered hills. Christmas Eve had arrived. I treasure this magical transition from light to darkness on this special night. The Earth quiets with the hush of anticipation shared in the hearts and minds of young and old. We eagerly look for the stable. We prepare to rejoice.
Not this night. The stable was demolished. The lowing cattle were grunting and exhaling in pain and shock. The tidings were grim.
Several hours earlier, nearly 200 feet of shed roof collapsed under the weight of the snow. Six steers were killed immediately. Five more had to be destroyed. More than 30 others who survived had to be sold for slaughter because of their injuries.
I was outside about 1 p.m. when I heard the destruction. A loud crash, followed by several others, lasted nearly 10 seconds. My heart sank even before my eyes confirmed what I already knew. Most of the cattle shed had caved in.
Earlier that week the farm became a temporary home to about 100 cows that came from another farm near Blair. They came because the shed they had called home also collapsed. We had the room outside and the place to feed them.
Our large cattle shed was home to several dozen beef steers belonging to my cousin. Several were trapped beneath the wreckage. Some were mooing in distress. Others were too stunned. Volunteers showed up to help, and the Melrose Fire Department sent a crew to assist.
We first freed the steers still able to walk. The snow-covered crumpled tin was treacherous to walk on. Firefighters used saws to cut the tin around several steers buried under the rubble. To my amazement, some of them got up and appeared unharmed as they walked away. Others had walked their last.
By the time we finished, I missed the Christmas Eve church service. I was tired. My back ached, my fingers were numb from the cold and my clothes were wet. It was a miserable and horrific way to spend a holiday. I was certainly not in the Christmas spirit.
Later that night I tried to put my mind at rest. It was awful what happened. I worried about my cousin, who has had a tough couple of years.
But sometimes the worst gives birth to our best. In our time of need, neighbors, friends and relatives showed up. Among them were four members of the family that had just lost their own shed. They all gave the gift of their time without expecting anything in return.
We were, in fact, blessed. A farmer in the state had been killed a few weeks ago when a shed collapsed on him. No one here was injured. Sheds can be rebuilt. Animals can be replaced.
In the midst of the twisted tin, splintered trusses and the carnage of the red-stained snow, the spirit of Christmas had indeed arrived.
I just didn’t know it at the time. I was looking in the wrong stable.

A three-generation hunting season

2010-12-04T07:59:00.000-08:00

A young doe came down the hill about a hundred yards away from us.

It was late Thanksgiving Day morning as I spotted the deer from my stand where my son Ross and I sat. He had just joined me a few minutes earlier.

"I wish that deer had some friends," Ross wryly remarked as we watched it nibble on some brush.

Suddenly I saw the doe's friend. An 8-point buck was following the same path. It stopped near the doe in some thick brush.

"Ross, it's a nice buck," I whispered.

I had already filled my buck tag on opening day when I shot a 10-pointer with a 15-inch spread. The same morning my dad, Bob Hardie, bagged a monster 10-pointer with tall, thick beams and an 18-inch spread. Ross had taken a doe two days earlier but was still looking for a buck. Ross, 22, had shot quite a few does in his eight years hunting but had yet to shoot a buck. Opportunities are limited because we don't kill the young bucks on our farm.

Here was his chance.

Ross drew up his rifle, took aim and fired. The doe took off but the buck stood. Ross had missed. The buck ran back up the hill from where it came and stopped behind some trees.

"Ross, he's still there," I said, having a better vantage point.

My son took aim again and fired. The buck ran off. Our hearts sank - at least mine did.

"Stop and look at the last place you saw him," I said. "We'll go down and look for blood."

We walked down the hill and started scouring the leaves, looking for telltale traces of red. Thankfully there was a slight crust of snow and ice that would help make the blood more visible. Ross went to the spot where he had last seen the buck and found some blood.

The trail was pretty consistent and we followed it up a hill, across four fences and an open field. Shortly after the last fence we found the buck. He had fallen into the creek bed, where he died. He had been shot through the neck.

It was a special moment between father and son, just as it was 30 years earlier when I shot my first buck from my father's stand.

Killing a buck didn't make my son a man. He's already a fine man. Killing a buck helped complete a hunting circle that goes back at least four generations.

Hunting teaches you that no matter whom you are or what you have accomplished in life, in the woods you're just another hunter huddled under a tree hoping for the big buck to cross your path. Hunting has taught me humility, the virtue of patience and a deep appreciation for creation, bundled with the value of tradition and family.

This was my 35th gun deer hunting season in Wisconsin. I've never missed a year since I turned 12 and was able to join the redcoat army in the woods. It's my dad's 61st season. He too has never missed a hunt, even in the early days when deer were scarce. It was quite unusual when my grandfather Keith Hardie shot a buck on our family farm in western Jackson County in the late 1940s. Grandpa died in 1994, but my son became the next generation of hunters when he joined us in 2002 at the age of 14.

No, it's not the thrill of the kill that draws me to hunting, but the time I've spent in the cold November woods sitting by my father or grandfather, sharing a bond that transcends the pulling of a trigger.

I know my son - and his grandfather - feels the same.

Sheep breeding season at the inn

2010-11-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

(Colonel Fitzwilliam, left, and Mr. Darcy, right)

September 20th began the same as every other day. I sat in the first window seat of the library, drinking my morning tea as I watched the sheep. I saw one of the Scotty girls riding Fanny or Emma – I couldn’t tell who from that distance. I thought it a bit strange but never gave it another thought – until I went to water the sheep later that morning.
To my alarm I saw that Mr. Darcy was cavorting around the barnyard with the girls. He had broken through the fence where he, Mr. Bingley and our new Suffolk ram Colonel Fitzwilliam were pastured. I realized it was Mr. Darcy, not one of the Scotty girls, that was on top of the sheep I saw earlier that morning.
I was extremely displeased because he had bred one of the Suffolk girls who were intended to be a part of the Colonel’s harem. I had been looking forward to getting some nice Suffolk lambs this coming year from the Colonel and what should have been his girls.
Mr. Darcy is a purebred registered Scottish Blackface ram and he has his own flock of that same breed to mate with. He has no business interfering with the Suffolk girls. I managed to get most of the ewes into the barn and chased Darcy into the pasture where I locked him out.
I found Chris’s father and Josh, our son-in-law, who were able to help fix the fence and get Mr. Darcy back where he belonged. Through the fence he continued to sniff anyone who would approach. Some of the ewes were definitely in heat and he was very determined to get to them. I feared some of the girls would be so obliging as to smash their behinds right up against the fence to help facilitate the illegitimate breeding.
The rams were all moved to the next paddock back to put some distance between them and the ewes.
Many sheep farmers would be breeding sheep at this time – we did last year. But this year we were deliberately delaying, hoping for our lambing season to begin mid-March, after the birth of our first grandchild who is thought to be due around March 3.
I don’t want to be busy playing midwife to sheep giving birth when the baby is arriving. Due to the unfortunate coupling I witnessed, I know at least one lamb is due on February 15.
We managed to keep the ewes safely separated from the rams for three and one-half more weeks. We separated the two flocks, placing the Suffolks in the lower pasture and the Scotties in the upper pasture. Then the appropriate ram was led to each pasture. The Colonel was fitted with a marking harness with a red grease paint type crayon. Whenever he breeds a ewe her backside is marked with the crayon, which eventually washes off. Each day we look for a new red butt, making note of it. The lambs are due five months later.
Last year, our old black ram bred Kitty less than one minute after being led into the girls’ pasture. A new crayon really colors the ewe well. Kitty’s whole backside was covered by the red marker. I had to laugh the next morning when I was preparing breakfast and an anxious guest told me over the café doors that he had just come back from a walk on our creek side trail – and he was afraid one of our sheep had been attacked! He thought her whole backside looked as if it were covered in blood!
I smiled as I confirmed to him that, yes, Kitty has been aggressively attacked yesterday – but not by a coyote. It was the ram. (I think he was a little embarrassed when I explained it all.)
Colonel Fitzwilliam was fitted with the harness and Mr. Darcy’s chest was manually chalked up with the crayon because we didn’t have a pin to hold the crayon for the other harness. Unfortunately he is too wild to catch every other day to mark him.
A sheep’s estrus cycle is around every 14 to 17 days. Three weeks in and our two best Suffolks – Kitty and her daughter Fanny – have not been marked, so I’m left with the awful suspicion that Mr. Darcy has impregnated both of them and the offspring of our two prize ewes will be crossbred mutts.
The colonel is only seven or eight months old so it is his first season working as a stud ram. We only have eight Suffolks he has to service. He has a gentle disposition with the ewes, nickering as he sweet talks them into complying with the call of nature. His father was of a gentle disposition which is a big part of why I bought him, hoping he would inherit his amiable demeanor.
Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, is much different. Unlike his namesake, he is no gentleman. When finally released into the Scottie girls’ pasture, he paced up and down the fence dividing the two pastures, pawing and snorting like a Brahma bull. He panted heavily like a rabid dog with his mouth open, his tongue hanging out. His idea of courtship with Marianne was to bash her violently into submission and have his way with her.
The guests are intrigued and fascinated with the goings-on in the barnyard and delight in counting red butts. The first five ewes (after the Valentine lambs) are due around March 9 or 10. Twin lambs are usually up to five days earlier.
Last weekend our daughter Jessica and her husband Josh visited. They brought a DVD copy of their baby’s sonogram, which was neat to be able to watch! (They’re so much clearer than when we were expecting Jessica.) And, oh yeah, it’s likely now that the baby could arrive around March 7 – just in time for lambing season!

The USDA (and one of their associates at the state health department) have egg on their faces

2010-08-31T18:51:00.001-07:00

Last month Brambleberry B&B was featured in the Wisconsin Bed and Breakfast Association's electronic monthly newsletter called Ezine. The topic was B&Bs that serve slow and organic foods -- and people were paying attention -- in particular, an overzealous employee at the health department in Madison.
This woman was ALARMED to see that we serve our own farm fresh eggs to guests. (So do most other farm B&Bs, which is what guests want and expect from us.) She used a microscope to further examine our web site and contacted our local restaurant and B&B inspector to interrogate her. She was forced to call us and ask all the same questions she asked at our routine inspection a few months ago. The Madison inspector pointed out that it is ILLEGAL to serve anything other than USDA inspected eggs to guests. How ridiculous is that!!! Ironically, I can legally sell up to $5,000 worth of those same farm fresh eggs without a permit. Some guests suggested I sell them each an egg and they could have me cook it for them. The inspector also became concerned when she saw we were serving our own high-quality, natural, homegrown pork (which is slaughtered in a state-inspected plant), she perused our dinner menu and saw there was turkey on it! And chicken! (Yes, those are acquired from the grocery store, and are placed in an ice-filled cooler for the trip home.)
We simply don't have the volume of business (or the money) doing our weekend dinners to warrant hiring an expensive restaurant supply company to deliver the small amounts of food needed for a weekend dinner party.
"I see you have sheep." Yes, we do. But I don't serve lamb to our guests. I don't care for sheep meat myself, so I think it's not possible for me to prepare it to someone elses's liking either. And I love my sheep. They are all pets, but I do sell their male offspring (which I don't name) for other people to eat if they so choose. If I did have my own lambs slaughtered, it would be in a state-inspected plant. In the future we will do the same with our beef.
Fortunately, they're not concerned with our fruit and vegetables -- yet.
In short, they're mostly concerned that our eggs are the only thing on our menu that aren't "inspected and approved" by someone from the USDA wearing a white lab coat. But what meaning do those words have anyway? Absolutely none!
My local inspector said she may be calling us the following week to say the inspector in Madison won't allow us to use our own eggs. That was weeks ago, and we still haven't heard anything in light of the recent contaminated egg fiasco/recall going on involving -- you guessed it -- "USDA inspected and approved eggs."
My farm-fresh eggs are not inspected by USDA inspectors. Guess what? Neither are MOST of the eggs that carry that very label. Only occasionally does an inspector visit a plant. According to an Aug. 19 report on the CBS Evening News "Most eggs growers routinely inspect themselves."!!!
According to Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute (a farm policy research group) 95 percent of all laying hens in the U.S. are owned by only 13 corporations. Of them, 192 companies have more than 75,000 birds in one facility! That's potentially a serious problem for everyone who eats USDA so-called inspected eggs. Chickens defecate from the same vent eggs roll out of. Sick birds and lots of chicken poop piling up lead to salmonella poisoning. When several thousand birds are kept in contained, cramped quarters as they are in the commercial egg-laying and chicken-slaughtering industries, animals are going to get sick and spread germs. And chicken poop is going to pile up fast. Some USDA commercial growers are not all that concerned about sanitation either.
We've got about 30 to 35 chickens here. Only about 20 of them lay eggs anymore. The rest are too old, and they are Chris's mother's pets. We do wash, sterilize and store our eggs per USDA standards. (I suppose I could don the white lab coat I still have from my days spent as a skin care specialist and a hair stylist when I do it.) Our eggs are safer and cleaner than what you can buy in the store -- no question about it. They are never undercooked either.
It's too bad an anal retentive inspector in Madison wants to stop us from doing what we do well -- giving our guests a pleasurable experience while enjoying pesticide free, preservative free, organic, safe, wholesome, healthy, REAL food grown here on site. It's one of the things guests most love about our B&B.
So let's get cracking people. Speak up! Don't let these jerks tell you what you can't eat.

A bumper crop of blackberries

2010-08-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

Our bed and breakfast is named after brambleberries, which is what the Scottish call blackberries or any berries with briars.

Not that we’re superstitious or anything, but in summer of 2007 which was our first year of business, there was a huge blackberry crop failure. We couldn’t help wonder if that was an omen.

This year, we’re happy to report, that we’ve never seen a more prolific crop of rubus allegheniensis, otherwise known as the blackberries. We’ve had lots of rain this season, resulting in plenty of moisture for the wild crop. And like every other crop this year, the season started about two weeks ahead of schedule and as of this writing, Aug. 1, we guess the crop has already peaked, but there are a few weeks of picking left.

This prolific plant covers our hardwood forests; particularly where livestock aren't as prevalent and where timber logging has left openings. We harvest the berries to eat fresh, make jams and also wines. We have a port-style blackberry wine that was bottled earlier this spring that shows exceptional promise.

Here are some recollections from Chris about blackberry picking:

The challenge in hunting blackberries comes not as much from the chase but in conquering the tangled mass of thorns and briars in the quest to find the juicy, purplish-black berries. And best of all, they're absolutely free.

Summers on the farm are always a busy time, with plenty of hay to harvest and other chores to be completed. But growing up here, we always found time for at least a day or two of serious blackberry picking, usually sandwiched between the second and third cuttings of hay.

The premium berry patch when I was a kid some 35 years ago was on a homestead plot owned by my great aunt and uncle. Much of the 160 acres was woodland that was overrun by blackberries, but the premium patch was on the property's border, accessible only by an overgrown logging road through the woods.

We had an old Jeep that could make the journey, but we also had a '55 Ford or something in that vintage. All I remember was big tail fins, a musty interior, no exhaust and no brakes. We rode in style.

Supposedly blackberry vines can live for 25 years or more. This patch had towering vines, many that were at least an inch thick. It was a dense thicket of both pain and pleasure, as one had to battle the sharp briars in order to get at the berries, which were the size of my thumb.

Dressed in thick jeans and long-sleeved flannel shirts and armed with empty ice cream pails, we tromped into the patch to do battle. As a young kid I ate way more berries than what went into the bottom of the pail, as was evidenced by the stain of purple around my mouth.

My grandfather Keith made a harness out of twine that put his berry bucket about chest high, freeing up both hands to pick. Grandpa was a berry picking machine and would return often to the car, emptying his pail into the smaller quart-size berry baskets, stopping long enough for a swig of water before heading back into the patch.

By that time I had long grown tired of berry picking and would take a nap in the car or sit under a nearby shade tree. The time would pass painfully slow, as it always does when you're young, and I'd wait as patiently as I could for the rest of the crew to finish for the day. How I long for those long days now when the seasons and the years seem to pass too quickly.

Eventually the pails would be full or arms and fingers would be too sore or scratched to continue and we'd call it a day. The patch never seemed empty though and sometimes we'd return a couple of days later to harvest more of the berries, as they sweetened under the hot summer sun.

There are still berries on that farm, but the patch has become a memory, like many of the pickers I loved so well. Every blackberry season brings back fond memories of those pickers, the old Ford and what seemed like simpler times.

Sherry has made almost daily trips in to the woods to pick berries, which are served fresh to our guests. The time for eating fresh berries is waning, but we’ll look forward to blackberry jam or a sip of blackberry wine in the cold of the winter to remind us of the summer days in the berry patch.

We hope this year’s bountiful blackberry harvest is a sign of good times to come!

Harvest Dinners at Brambleberry

2010-06-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

We’ve known about Jim Denevan and his organization “Outstanding in the Field” for a few years now. We applaud their efforts of bringing people together to really connect with their food source.
For about $200 a person, you can ride their bus to one of their gourmet dinners which are held at various farms or gardens across the country. The Outstanding in the Field crew works together to help prepare the sites for banquets which feature a combination of locally sourced foods as well as organic produce grown at the site.
Sometimes the banquet table is set up literally feet from the origin of the feast. Local chefs are brought in to create gastronomic delights with the seasonal, local foods. Sometimes local wines are offered to pair with the entrees.
We do something similar at Brambleberry B&B. Every Saturday evening July through November we offer special Harvest Dinners for our guests. The majority and very often all of the meat, organic vegetables, eggs, herbs and fruits are grown right here on our farm. And it’s a lot less than $200 a person!
Our dinners are only $30 to $40 – a huge bargain for fresh, healthy organic meals with zero miles (or almost zero) on it.

These four-course dinners are served in our dining room – not our garden though, because we only have a crew of two to harvest, set up, cook and serve (and farms do have insects outdoors!) But we’re always happy to offer farm and garden tours, so you can visit and touch your food source if you want to. You can also arrange to buy organic, gourmet grass fed lamb from us. In the future, we’re planning to sell our homegrown pork and maybe even beef to the public as well.
Our dinners this year are scheduled by what we think will be ripening in the gardens at that time. Next year we’ll have a better idea when things will be ready and expect to offer a bit more variety week-to-week.
Guests don’t have to partake of our harvest dinners to experience Brambleberry’s fresh, homegrown organic produce and other products. Everyday our delicious, generous breakfasts incorporate eggs, pork, jams, vegetables used in frittatas and fruit as starters. We serve maple syrup made right here on the farm for as long as our supply lasts. Each evening, anyone who wants to can sample our fruity homemade wines.
We’ve even got two beautiful nature walks for guests to enjoy – something not many B&Bs can offer.
Brambleberry is the first and only bed and breakfast in Wisconsin to offer homegrown harvest dinners on a regular basis. We’re leading the way, changing how Wisconsin eats. Buy local. Support local agriculture. It’s good for your health and our beautiful planet.
So if you’d like to experience one of our harvest dinners, you’ll have to stay here. Our licensed restaurant serves B&B guests only. We simply don’t have the time to serve the general public in addition to our guests. But one couple can have dinner, stay the night and have a wonderful breakfast for about $150 to $200 per couple, not per person, which is still far less than Outstanding in the Field charges for one person’s dinner!

2010-05-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

The weather has been perfect for making hay.
If you have animals to keep year-round, you need to feed them in the winter. Hence the need for hay.
Chris and his Dad put up more than 800 bales so far, which is about 3/4ths of what we estimate we will need to feed the sheep when the pastures are dormant.
Hot weather that drives most people inside to air conditioning is perfect weather for drying hay. There always seems to be a direct correlation between the hottest days of the summer and the amount of hay that needs to be baled.
Sometimes when people complain about the heat, I (Chris) ask them if they've ever worked in a hay mow when it's 95 degrees outside. I usually get a strange glance and people quickly shift the topic of conversation.
Mow, which rhymes with cow, is the place in the barn where the hay is stored. When you're getting close to the top of a metal roof with very little air movement, 95 degrees outside seems refreshing.
In the old days - for me, that's early 1970s - baling hay used to require one person driving the tractor and one or two people riding on the hay wagon to stack the bales as they came out of the baler. We used iron hooks to grab the bales and stack them. Sherry also grew up on a farm and had to stack bales or pick up them in the fields before putting them in the barn.
I still have a scar on the top of my head from the day when the load shifted and my brother's bale hook found my skull instead of a bale. There is speculation the injury went far deeper, which explains why I became a journalist.
We became a more modern farm in the mid-1970s when we got a kick-baler, which fired the bales into the wagon. Most farmers today use big round balers, requiring heavy equipment to move around the bales.
On a good day we'd put up about 1,200 to 1,500 bales of hay. My cousins sometimes helped out.
In the old days between loads my brother, cousins and I would head to the milk house and consume copious amounts of water, sticking our heads under the faucet to cool off. We'd sprawl out on our makeshift furniture - bags of feed - and contemplate how many more loads we'd have to do that day and argue about whose turn it was to wash up the milking equipment or who had to stick around to help milk the cows while others went swimming in the creek.
Baling also is a chance to cleanse my pores and stack hay bales rather than pushing around paperwork. It also gives me a sense of satisfaction that although summer has officially not yet started, we're already on track to feed our animals this winter.

Mowing and groaning

2010-05-22T06:33:00.001-07:00

One of the challenges of having a country property is keeping the grass mown. That’s sometimes much easier said than done when the areas we mow have been reclaimed from patches of weeds or former pastures.
We have several acres of lawn, pasture and hiking trails that we mow. At first we did it all with a walk-behind mower until Chris broke down three years ago and purchased a riding mower. That made the job go much faster and also expanded our mowing area. But there are still plenty of places that the riding mower can’t go and you still need the smaller mowers for trimming.
This spring the mowing season started early because of the warm and wet weather that was perfect for grass growing. Unfortunately the mowers weren’t ready for the season. Over the years we have accumulated quite a collection of walk-behind mowers – some ours, some belong to Chris’s parents – and they have gradually broken down. Last year we had 1.5 of them running. The 0.5 comes from one of them sometimes starting and sometimes not.
We were down to a shaky 1 when the 0.5 did not start at all several weeks ago. The 1 started and we got most of the lawn mowed before it quit. Unfortunately the grass that was starting to get a foot long was still growing.
What about the riding mower, you might ask? Good question. The answer is long, but here’s the condensed version. Last year Chris ran over a small steel fence post with the riding mower. The post wrapped around the blade. A trip to the shed and the use of a cutting disc freed the post and miraculously, the mower still worked. Sort of.
This spring when it came time to sharpen the blades, Chris realized that the only thing holding one of the blades on was a bolt. The mandrel that the blade fits over was completely rounded off – the result of the fence post accident.
Chris purchased an extended warranty when he bought the mower, but of course the part that broke “was not covered.” The labor to fix it would be covered, but it would take three weeks before an appointment could be scheduled.
Watching grass grow might be more interesting than listening to Chris’s parts tale of woe, but it took nearly four weeks and five orders of parts before the mower was fixed. Of course if he had listened to Sherry and had a “professional” repair the mower in the first place, the repair probably would have been done earlier but that’s not how do-it-yourself hobby farmers operate.
Meanwhile, the grass was so long Chris had to use a pasture mower pulled behind a tractor to mow some of it.
The other five mowers were taken to the repair shop to be fixed. Our plan is to have lots of back-up mowers to get us through the mowing season. We’ve stimulated the parts economy plenty. It’s time to cut grass. Even if we have to get out the scythe!

The war against quackgrass

2010-05-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

We recently received some much-needed spring rainfall, so we decided to hit our fruit garden for some weeding. The moist soil makes the dreaded task of pulling weeds a lot easier. Sherry tackled our strawberry patch and Chris headed to the raspberry patch.

Actually, we have two raspberry patches. One is the established patch and the other is a new patch we started last year from some transplants. The second patch was started below our vegetable garden in what used to be cow pasture.

The problem is it "got away" from us last year and there was a thick mat of quackgrass growing between the rows. It was already a foot high.

Unfortunately, Chris did not do his research before deciding that some mechanical help was the way to take out the quackgrass. The University of Minnesota Extension in a pamphlet called "Controlling Quackgrass in Gardens" says, in bold print: "Never use a rototiller where quackgrass is growing." Why? Because it amounts to propagating thousands of new plants from the chopped-up rhizomes."

Rhizomes are what makes quackgrass such a nasty and invasive weed. Once a quackgrass plant goes to seed, it produces about 25 seeds which remain viable for up to five years in the soil, according to the UM extension.

Each plant then develops rhizomes with a node every inch or so. Each node is capable of producing a plant. And a plant is capable of producing 300 feet of rhizomes.

That is really scary. The only thing that multiplies faster than quackgrass is the promises of politicians during an election year. The unfortunate thing is you can count on quackgrass.

Our only options now are to use a herbicide, which would also take out the raspberries (and we strive to be chemical-free in our gardens), pull each plant up by hand and make sure we get each rhizome, heavily mulch (although rhizomes will push up through asphalt pavement they are so tough) or give up.

We're not ready to give up just yet. Perhaps there's some marketing opportunity here and we can find some value in selling quackgrass rhizomes. Perhaps we can offer any guests from Northern Africa some free rhizomes to take home to plant. There's lots of room to green things up in the Sahara Dessert, don't you think?

(University of Minnesota Extension photo)

Where there's smoke, there's fire

2010-04-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

This will put a skip into your heart -- the day that you have a new gas stove installed in your kitchen: You find the fire department at your house when you come home from work.
That's exactly what happened last week. We had just finished installation of our new commercial stove -- a beauty (or monstrosity depending on how you look at it) with 12 burners and two ovens. (More about the commercial kitchen coming later ... that's great news!) It required six men to move it inside and a special gas line just to operate it. 350,000 BTUs -- that's a lot of fire!
After the installation, Chris went to work and Sherry started to acclimate herself to the gas fumes from 14 pilot lights (it has two ovens!). It had been about 25 years since Sherry had cooked on gas and she has a slight fear of it, imagining explosions and fires. Of course that's also because Chris bought the cheapest gas stove possible when we were first married, which hardly compares to the industrial strength restaurant model we have now.
Sherry was trying out the oven for the first time making a pizza. One of the recruits that we persuaded to help move the stove was coming over for some wine tasting. She happened to glance out the kitchen window to see Chris's 72-year-old parents dashing across the lawn trying to drag garden hoses. Upon looking again Sherry saw the large wood pile beside our outdoor wood-burning furnace was an inferno. Flames were lapping at the nearby chicken coop. She dropped everything to run out and help. (The oven had not been turned on yet.)
Sherry turned on our garden hose from the house and the folks ran a hose from the barn. Dad sprayed the fire with one hose while Sherry and Mom formed an emergency bucket brigade, as the other hose was a little short. After 10 minutes of battling the fire, which was fanned by gusty winds, Dad finally came to the conclusion that professional help was required.
"Will someone please call the fire department!"
Sherry ran into the house to dial 9-1-1. She got a three-toned beep and the message. "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please try again." A second try to 9-1-1 went through. The Melrose Fire Department arrived within 15 minutes and other trucks followed.
The firefighters knocked the fire down with water and chemicals while Dad continued the trickle operation from the garden hose. The winds and the fire had devoured the stack of wood but fortunately roast chicken was not on the menu. The difficulty in fighting the fire was getting to the coals underneath the pile. Dad got a tractor with a loader and leveled the pile, spreading it out so the coals could be doused.
About the time things starting winding down, Chris came around the corner at the beginning of our road about one mile from home and saw a sign "Emergency vehicles ahead."
"Don't tell me it's the stove," Chris thought, immediately putting his foot into the accelerator. "Is our house gone?"
Chris came around the final corner to see four fire trucks and a bunch of smoke -- but our house was still standing. Our neighbor arrived soon after for our appointed wine tasting.
Apparently a spark from the firebox of the furnace had blown into the wood pile. The gusty winds fanned the spark and created a vortex of flames as the pile was stacked in a pyramid fashion.
Other than causing severe damage to next winter's wood supply, no harm was done. We were lucky the fire didn't spread to the chicken house or the barn.
By the way, the new stove works fine!

Maple syrup season a sour one

2010-04-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

The maple syrup season has ended and will go down as one of the worst in recent memory.
That's the word I'm receiving from maple syrup producers around the state who know a lot more about the seasonal crop than I do.
This was the first year that my wife Sherry and I collected sap and made syrup. Our total for the year was about a dozen or so pints, so we've got enough for our own use and to serve to our bed and breakfast guests, but the sap collection was very slow.
Blame that on the weather. The unusually warm March was wonderful to put winter behind us, but the warm nights was not conducive to sap flow.
That's just the opposite of last year, which was one of the best seasons ever for Wisconsin syrup.
Gretchen Grape, the executive director of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association, told me the people who used tubing did better as they suck the sap out of the trees. Those who use collection containers -- like us -- didn't do as well.
However the syrup we did get -- the result of hours of cooking on an old wood-burning stove in a temporary sugar shack that I set up outside -- tasted wonderful. Sherry finished the sap off on the kitchen stove and it had a rich, butterscotch taste.
I can hardly wait to sit down to a plate of sourdough pancakes and enjoy the fruits of our labor.