NY Sheep and Wool Festival

The annual New York State Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck was held this past weekend. I've been wanting to go to this legendary event ever since we moved to New York seven years ago.

While it doesn't hurt to be an avid knitter or crocheter, this is an event that the whole family can enjoy.

We especially enjoyed seeing the great variety of sheep on display in the multiple barns. You could get up close to pet them to feel the different textures of the wool.

In the event barns you could watch the sheep being judged for appearance and wool quality.

There were sheep shearing demonstrations scheduled throughout the day. Here are the sheep customers waiting for their haircuts. You can see the ones that have already been shorn in with the long haired bunch.

The shearing itself took only about 5 minutes, but before he began, the guy doing the shearing explained that process and how he held the sheep to make it most comfortable and least likely to try to jump up and run away!

Looks uncomfortable, but this sheep was actually just relaxed back in this position, held only by the shearer's knees.

There were also dog frisbee catching demonstrations, a kiddy area with games and rides, and load of food vendors. My favorite was Taste Budds Aztec Hot Chocolate! Yum.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

Smoothing Out Life's Little Bumps

For the life of a country inn the bumps can come in the form of magnificent heritage trees with growing root systems!

There were a couple spots in the pathways over the bridge and around the carriage house that had already been bumped up by tree roots and then Tropical Storm Irene did not help the situation!

So yesterday the pavers arrived to smooth the bumps and lay down some new asphalt.

And speaking of magnificent trees, the leaves are just beginning to turn around our property and we will probably be having loads of wonderful color for several weeks, usually through the first couple of weeks in November.

This picture was from last year. At the moment the leaves on this shrub are still green.

Reflections of September

This is Veteran's Park, just around the corner from the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn. A lovely spot for a picnic lunch.

The weather was perfect and the surface of the pond was as smooth as glass.

Throughout the summer on various evenings local musicians will set up in the gazebo and play for a couple hours.

The library is the building in back of the gazebo and next to that is the All Arts Matter building, home to a number of exhibits and performance events.

A Watery and Windy Weekend!

The Greenville Arms 1889 Inn happens to be in Greene county, NY which was one of the hardest hit counties by hurricane Irene (aka "tropical storm"). However, we must be located in a charmed little corner because while we did lose power for about 3 hours and our little creek did overrun its banks for a while, by Sunday evening everything was back to normal. We feel extremely lucky.

During the storm we had a full house of inn guests and workshop students! Everyone stayed high and dry and were able to enjoy themselves in spite of the unwanted weather excitement!

This was our creek on Sunday afternoon.

And this was the creek on Monday morning.

I've posted more information and pictures of our experience on our workshops blog.

Some near by communities such as Windham, were not so lucky and our hearts go out to them as they work hard to rebuild. We hope you come up for a visit when these towns and the businesses reopen to support them as they get back to normal. Windham Mountain is still on schedule for a full winter skiing season!

The Morning Glories are Taking Over

The Morning Glories on our flowering fence are going wild!

I just love this heavenly shade of blue.

The painting workshop that was at the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn last week was enjoying the pool too, but mostly only as a backdrop for their paintings!

The Not So Lazy Days of Summer

The activity levels around the inn rose to a fever pitch in the last couple of weeks, and I'm not talking about the weather!

The annual visit from the painting crew started on August 6th. This years task was the front of the Main Inn - the walls, columns, and porch. The first step was to take off the old cracking and peeling layers of vinyl paint from the porch.

The idea was to then cover it with a fresh smooth layer of paint, but lo and behold, the wood under that old paint was beautiful! How can one cover up such beautiful wood flooring? So the plan was changed to completely strip and sand the wood porch, and then just use a semi-transparent wood stain.

It was quite a job getting that paint off and sanding everything smooth. The painters went through over $300 in sanding disks!

But it was well worth the effort. It looks like a brand new porch!

Our porch furniture was moved under the trees outside our office windows while this project was taking place. It looks like a seating furniture convention.

The final step was to stain the porch. We choose a stain called "Sweet Rose Red". With the fresh white paint on the walls and the fresh green paint on the trim, the red stained porch really stands out. We love the new look and hope you do, too.

It is now so beautiful, that I told the painters that we might not want to let anyone walk on it again! But really it is just off limits until Monday.

While this project was going on we had more "excitement" - someone crashed into the telephone pole across the street from our inn, completely yanking off the telephone lines off of several buildings, including our inn.

The driver obviously was not paying attention to the 30 MPH speed limit - that's the speed limit sign you see flattened to the ground.

Luckily no one was hurt in the accident, but we were totally cut off from phone and internet service and the repair company was estimating that they would not be there to fix it for 2 weeks because of the Verizon strike!!! Yikes.

We immediately started putting in place an alternate plan to stay in touch and be available for the many inn guests that were checking in on the weekend. I have an iPhone with AT & T and my husband went out at got one with Verizon. So we were covered for whoever would get the best cell coverage. Then we forwarded all calls that were coming into our main inn line to the cellphones. I had to take my laptop out to the nearest free wifi spot to get our email and check for any online reservations on the first day, but then we activated our iPhone as wifi hot spots for our computers. As my husband quipped, we were now running our 4 business off of 2 iPhones. (Not quite, we also used my MacBook Pro.)

By the time we had our alternate plan in place on the second day of the "communication dead zone" (we did still have cable TV), Verizon showed up and fixed the pole and connected all the lines! Way to go Verizon guys! We definitely breathed a sigh of relief.

But we couldn't rest easy for long -- one of our septic systems was acting up. So in came the backhoe and repair crew. A couple of new pipes and new transfer tank later and everything is back to being peachy keen.

No pictures for this project. It's not quite as glamorous as the new front porch, but I'll end this post with an update on our flowering fence.

The Morning Glories are growing like crazy and the bright pink and soft blue flowers are lovely.

Clean and Green with CitraSolv

Here at the Greenville Arms, we believe in eco-responsibility and are always on the look out for ways to be ever "greener" in Greenville! We already recycle, reuse and re-purpose wherever we can. (If you ever look on the back side of your check-in form, you might notice that it is recycled wine menus, and we take phone reservation information on over-printed on unused Franklin Day Planner pages leftover from my days in the corporate world!)

To this end, we recently discovered a new product line called CitraSolv. It is a natural cleaner made with real essential oils derived from citrus peels. They have general cleaners and degreasers (handy in the kitchen), glass and window cleaners, spot removers, drain cleaners, laundry soap, hand and body soap, and air fresheners. They all have no artificial ingredients or scents and are NOT tested on animals.

All in all, some great cleaning and freshening products, but the funny thing is we were not introduced to the products as household cleaners, but as an art supply! Robert Burridge was teaching a workshop for our Hudson River Valley Art Workshops and he had a case of CitraSolv shipped to us for use in the class. He uses it to create the most amazing collage papers, but also touted it as a fabulous paint brush cleaner and household cleaner.

So I just had to look up this product online to learn more about it! After looking at CitraSolvs website, their eco and animal-friendly policies, and hearing more testimonials from both artists and inn guests who were familiar with the products, we decided to add the CitraSolv concentrate product to our Inn Shop because we already carry various art and fiber supplies for the art workshops.) I was sold!

But then when I contacted CitraSolv about placing an order, they told me about a photo contest they were having - "Get Out of the Dog House with CitraSpot" - a new spot removing product. All you had to do was email a photo of your favorite spot making dog!

Well, we definitely have a couple of "spot makers." So I submited this photo of Hudson and Bree, our Inn dogs.

I was incredibly surprised a short time later to learn that this photo was the grand prize winner in their contest! The prize was a box full of CitraSolv products -- and more important to Hudson and Bree -- 2 nice natural chewing bones!

I can't wait to try out these products around the inn. They have such lovely natural fragrances, too -- orange, lavender, and lemon verbena! Thanks, CitraSolv!