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Priority PC

August 9th, 2012 by Susan

Priority Pussy Cat

OS X Mountain Lion has nothing on PC VI Barn Cat! For those who need clarification on the new coding PC VI, read: pussy cat 6. While you computer geeks are all smiles and chuckles over the latest big cat – we got a few smiles and chuckles over this big cat who squeezed himself into a priority mailbox. Though proud to have have his soft-fur updated to the newer more streamlined PC 13.1 model (that’s pussy cat 13.1 lbs) our 6 year old Snowball still finds himself drawn to compacting himself into small spaces.

Gotta’ love those big cats!

Tags: Smoky & Snowball
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Stetson Hollow Trail and Falls

August 5th, 2012 by Susan

Today on our Sap-bucket list we highlight the Stetson Hollow Trail and Falls. A perfect activity for a hot summer day in the Mad River Valley, the tree shaded Stetson Hollow trail follows along the Stetson Brook and is an easy 1.2 mile hike. Take your camera – there is some gorgeous scenery on this 45 minutes hike to the falls.

At the head of the trail you will be treated with the sight of a 40 foot ‘horsetail’ falls. A seasonal falls, spring and fall are when the water is most abundant however during other times of year this is still a lovely trail. While the water is cooling, swimming is not permitted.

Heading south from the town of Warren, Stetson Hollow Road is on the right 2.2 miles from the Lincoln Gap/Rte 100 intersection. It looks like you are driving into someone’s yard and actually you are (please respect their privacy) but keep going, you’re on the right track to the start of the trail and a bit farther along is space for parking.

Have fun and keep cool.

Tags: Fall foliage, Green Mountains, Mad River Valley, Trees, West Hill House
Posted in Attractions & Events, Fall foliage, Mad River Valley, Summer activities | Comments Off

Vermont Cheese Tour

July 30th, 2012 by peter

Guests Laurent and Julia created this list of some of the excellent Vermont Cheese makers–and they visited many of them as you will see from their comments! If you like cheese you may want to follow in their footsteps.

See also the Vermont Cheese Trail which is the source of the map on the right – the numbers before each Cheese maker refers to their number on that map. The header image on this blog is also from that site.

The letters following Cheese maker names mean the following:

C = Cow’s milk
S = Sheep’s milk
G = Goat’s milk

Cheese makers are listed south to north:

14. Grafton Village Cheese C
400 Linden St/Rte 30,
Brattleboro
open daily, 10-6
Comment: Large store, good amount of samples, must pay to see animals, can view cheese making through window.

39. Vermont Shepherd S
281 Patch Farm Road, Putney
Farm Store is open year round 9-5
Comment: No people around to greet or show you around. Small honor store. No samples.

33. Taylor Farm C
825 Route 11, Londonderry
Open daily 10-6
Comment: Small store. Free range chickens running around. Some samples.

16. Hildene Farm Signature Cheese C & G
1005 Hildene Rd, Manchester
Open daily 9:30-4:30

31. Southwind Farm C
3783 Vermont Route 30, Pawlet
Open daily 9am-6pm

8. Consider Bardwell Farm C & G
1333 VT Route 153, West Pawlet
Self-serve farm store is open year
round ~ The farm is open to visitors on weekends
Comment: Small store. Can pet goats. Some samples.

27. Plymouth Artisan Cheese C
106 Messer Hill Rd,
Plymouth Notch
Open to the Public

23. Neighborly Farms of Vermont C
1362 Curtis Rd,
Randolph Center
Open Monday-Friday 8-4
Comment: Small store. Gave free tour of cheese making. Can pet calves. Some samples. Unpaved roads.

12. Fat Toad Farm G
787 Kibbee Rd, Brookfield
Open daily
Comment: Best small farm experience. Small store. Lots of samples of cheese and caramel. Got tour of farm. Unpaved roads.

35. Turkey Hill Farm C
55 Turkey Hill Rd,
Randolph Center
Farm store is open daily 7am-5pm

37. Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery C & G
40 Pitman Rd, Websterville
Open Monday-Friday 9-5
Comment: More industrial. Small visitor center. Samples only when asked for. Save time and buy it at other stores.

5. Cabot Creamery Cooperative Visitors Center C
2878 Main St, Cabot
June-Oct 9-5;
800.837.4261
AlsoWaterbury 802-244-6334 and
Quechee 802-295-1180, 9-6 daily

Dakin Farm
5797 Route 7
Ferrisburg, VT 05456
Hours: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. – seven days a week
Comment: Not a farm. Medium size store. Lot’s of samples of cheeses and jams. Good Maple frozen yogurt. Has a sugaring house.

30. Shelburne Farms C
1611 Harbor Road, Shelburne
Open during summer 9-5

42. Willow Hill Farm S & C
313 Hardscrabble Rd, Milton
Farm store and viewing
room open daily 9-5

19. Lakes End Cheeses C & G
212 West Shore Rd, Alburg
Open 10-7 daily mid-June
through Labor Day

15. Green Mountain Blue Cheese C
2183 Gore Rd, Highgate Center
Open daily 7am-7pm

4. Boston Post Creamery G
2061 Sampsonville Rd,
Enosburg Falls
Open to the public: Tuesday-Friday
9-5, Saturday 9-4, Sunday 10-3

Tags: Cheese, Tour, Vermont Cheese
Posted in Attractions & Events, Food & Drink, Summer activities | Comments Off

I recommend Mountain Lion!

July 29th, 2012 by peter

Mac users should head to the App Store in your desktop Dock and get Mountain Lion. It is absoutely worth the nominal price of $19.95. And as the look and feel and basics are unchanged, it is an easy update to handle.

I (Peter) have now updated 3 Macs and have had no issues. Some neat things to note:

Overall Finder is quite a bit slicker. Actions result in almost instant results, eliminating some of the lag that I have seen in recent OS releases.
The new Safari 6.0 is great. (It is also available on Lion if you don’t want to update your OS yet). A great step forward is the adoption of the single address and search field that has been one of Chrome’s unique strengths till now. While password storage is still based on Keychain the integrated preference pane is much easier to use. In my testing it also much faster than prior version and certainly equals Chrome. So it is time to move back from Chrome to Safari I think!
The notification feature is neat and quite customizable.
I am REALLY enjoying experimenting with dictation! You do need to speak clearly but the accuracy is excellent if you do.
Software updating for the OS and apps in the Apple Store now works much like the iPad and iPhone–a much easier process.
Plus you will find tweaks and improvements across all the built-in apps.

You will need a relatively recent Mac to make the leap up the Mountain, but I think it is fair to say that if you are running older hardware it is time to upgrade to take advantage of the speed and built-in storage of the more recent Macs.

If you have a nice LCD monitor already the Mac mini is a great choice, and I really love the Macbook Air–as I have blogged about before–if you need a laptop. See the links on the right for more info. The new Macbook Retina is a brilliant piece of engineering, but it is likely to be over the top for most users for now.

If you need more help don’t forget that I am a Mac Consultant. My rates are very competitive and advice is free for guests at the West Hill House breakfast table!

Tags: OSX Mountain Lion
Posted in Mac Computer Blog | Comments Off

The Road Less Traveled – Draw Bridge on Route 2

July 13th, 2012 by peter

VT Route 2 through Lake Champlain Islands

Courtesy of Google Maps – click for larger view

For our guests from the north and west, a delightful daytime route in the summer to West Hill House from northern New York State is Route 2 down the island chain in Lake Champlain.The road runs from just the south and east of Alburg to I89 intersection 17 just north of Burlingon, and is the alternative to following Route 78 from the same point over to Swanton and I89 intersection 21 (which is the faster route).

In addition to driving through picturesque small communities and having marvelous views of the lake, you will go over an arm of Lake Champlain on the North Hero – Grand Isle Draw Bridge. This structure was built in the 1950’s and consists of a double leaf bascule* girder draw bridge with a total draw span of 130 feet.

We were driving on the route this week and were fortunate to arrive to find the bridge open to allow the passage of a small yacht. When you are taking the road less travelled this kind of interruption is not a delay but an added attraction! We enjoyed the wait by taking some photographs.

The bridge operator told us that the draw bridge is opened for lake traffic every half hour on the hour and half hour from 8AM to 8PM if a boat is waiting.

*A bascule bridge is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances the span.

Tags: Lake Champlain, North Hero – Grand Isle Draw Bridge
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Happy 4th of July!

July 4th, 2012 by Susan

Happy 4th everyone!

Wow! Awesome!

The Sugarbush area 4th of July celebrations got off to a great start on June 30 with the 3rd annual Stars and Stripes Air Show featuring vintage plane and glider aerial acrobatics.

This morning the focus is on the 64th annual Warren 4th of July parade with its collection of quirky floats which draw thousands of folks to the area for a day of celebration. Family activities, music, and food – including a roast pig from Gaylord Farm and pizza from American Flatbread- will help keep the celebration going all day.

Swimming holes will be a great attraction today too, as folks look to cool off. Sugarbush Resort has activities throughout the day and to the enjoyment of everyone will conclude the day with a spectacular fireworks display.

Come Sunday we’ll all be encouraging the runners in the 2nd annual Mad Marathon as it winds it’s way through the beautiful Mad River Valley. We have a house-full of runners booked in for the weekend. Go runners!

Wishing you all a safe and fun filled day.

Tags: 4th of July, Mad River Valley, Sugarbush, West Hill House
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Canada Day!

July 1st, 2012 by Susan

Wishing all our Canadian friends around the world,

“Happy Canada Day! Joyeus Fête du Canada!”.

Canada Day or Fête du Canada, is a great day of celebration in Canada. Commemorating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867 enactment of the British North America Act, which united the three British colonies into a single country called Canada. Canadians around the world celebrate this holiday with family and friends, parades, and of course fireworks.

Tags: National Celebrations
Posted in Global Travel | Comments Off

Indian Rope Plant

June 30th, 2012 by Susan

Blossoms on our Indian Rope plant.

About 30 years ago we purchased an Indian Rope plant and this hardy little plant has traveled with us on our numerous moves. Always adapting very well to its new environment this plant asks nothing more of us than water, tlc and from time-to-time, a bigger pot.

While green for most of the time, every so often it surprises us by bursting into clusters of waxy pink flowers. The flowers in each cluster are quite small though the cluster of flowers is a fair size.

Those of you who have visited West Hill House may remember our fig tree. This tough little guy was also purchased 30 years ago and continues to thrive.

When we moved from Texas to Vermont to the B&B, the fig tree, the Indian Rope plant and three African Violets shared the front seat of my car! And, since the move took place in the winter, we had to ask the B&B owners with whom we stayed on our journey, not if they took pets but if they took plants because it was too cold to leave them in the car overnight. Happily all B&B owners said yes and the plants arrived safely at their new Vermont home.

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Soft Ginger Cookies

June 29th, 2012 by Susan

A yummy treat.

Stirring it up! While cleaning rooms the other day I clicked on the TV and found The Barefoot Contessa featuring a batch of the Ultimate Ginger Cookie. They looked absolutely scrumptious so after finishing the rooms I cleaned up and headed off to the kitchen to cook up a batch for our weekend guests. Unfortunately I didn’t have all the ingredients called for in that recipe so I made my own version of ginger cookies.

Ingredients:

2 1/4 c. all purpose flour (I use King Arthur Flour)
1 t. baking soda
2 t. ground cinnamon
1 1/2 t. ground cloves
1/2 t. nutmeg ( I grate nutmeg so just eyeballed the quantity)
1/2 t. ground ginger (I used a tiny bit more than this)
1/4 t. fleur de sel

an additional 1/3 c. granulated sugar for rolling cookies in before baking

1 c. light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/4 c. canola oil
1/3 c. unsulfured molasse

1/4 c. to 1/3 c. crystalized ginger, chopped into small pieces
1/2 c. raisins (optional)

Preparation:

Set the oven to 350°F. The cookies will bake for about 12-14 minutes. I made 22 cookies.

Put the first 7 ingredients into a large bowl and set it aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix on low speed, the brown sugar, canola oil and unsulfured molasses. Note that the dough is fairly stiff so I don’t recommend using a hand mixer. With the mixer still on low speed add the egg, mix for about 1 minute and remember to scrape the sides of the bowl – stop the mixer first. Without changing the mixer seed, very gradually add the dry ingredients which are in the first bowl. If the mixer is going too fast you will find yourself and the mixer covered in a fine white dusting of flour! Increase speed and mix on medium speed for about 2 minutes. Add the crystalized ginger and raisins (optional) and mix until incorporated. Make dough balls about 1 T. in size and roll in the reserved 1/3 cup of sugar. Place dough balls on a parchment lined jelly roll pan or cookie sheet and flatten slightly with your fingers.

Bake until the cookies are crackled on top but still soft to the touch. Cool cookies on the pan for a few minutes then transfer to a cooling rack to complete cooling. These freeze well if they last long enough for you to get them into containers!

Dishing it out! One sunny summer day, my dad and I decided to take a drive along a nearby lake so stopped off first at the grocery store for sustenance for the journey. While I choose a well aged cheddar cheese, my dad went off to find crackers or so I thought but back he came with a box of gingersnaps. Supplied with these items and the thermos of tea from home, we set off on our adventure. This was the day that I learned how well cheddar cheese and crunchy gingersnaps go together. While these ginger cookies are soft, they are still pretty darn good with a cup of tea and a chunk of strong cheddar cheese.

Enjoy!

Tags: Recipes, tea
Posted in Food & Drink, Recipes | Comments Off

Getting ready for Mountain Lion

June 27th, 2012 by peter

OS X Mountain Lion

OS X Lion

For my birthday this July it looks like I (along with all other Mac users) will be getting a herd of Mountain Lions–seems particularly appropriate for me given that I am a Leo!

To get ready for what should be an easy $19.99 update from Lion to Mountain Lion via the App Store, it is important that you have your existing Lion well groomed. Unfortunately many people’s Macs are not as svelte as they should be if they updated to Lion from a prior OS – e.g. Leopard or Snow Leopard. I know this from personal experience.

Unfortunately Apple no longer provides a “clean install” option for a new OS, and for reasons that no-one has really been able to figure out, updating a legacy OS to Lion WITHOUT doing a clean install can sometimes result in a Mac that is not the king of the jungle in terms of speed.

The answer is in fact to do a clean install. It’s a bit time consuming but not complicated. The one catch is that you do need to have a second Lion capable Mac or borrow one – the process is non-destructive to the second Mac as long as there is enough disk space to temporarily host your User folder and all its contents.

Step Zero is to ENSURE you have a full back-up, e.g. with Time Machine, of the Mac you need to update–or streamline if Lion was perviously installed, and of the surrogate Mac. You should not need to use these back-ups for the following process, but things can go wrong so you should always have a contingency plan. (In any event if you are not backing up your Mac(s), now is the time to start. Hard drives fail – it’s not an “if”, it’s a “when”.)

Step One is to use Migration Assistant (in your Utilities folder) on both Macs to migrate the User you are wanting to keep from the Mac to be streamlined to the temporary surrogate mother (so to speak!). (Make sure the User name is not already in use on this Mac.) You can do this over a wired or wireless network so provided both Macs are connected to your home network no extra connections are needed. Be sure to migrate Applications and Settings as well as the User. As noted above there needs to be enough disk space to temporarily host your User folder and all its contents. Migration Assistant will tell you if there is not enough space; there is no danger of damaging files on the surrogate Mac as long as User names are not duplicated.

Step Two is to make a Lion install DVD-R or a bootable Flash Drive. This is a little tricky, but instructions are available here.

Step Three is to boot your to-be-streamlined Mac with the new DVD by starting it with the “C” key held down or with the Flash Drive. Then use the Utilities menu to erase/re-format the hard drive. This is why you need Step Zero – just in case things go wrong. Erasing a hard drive is not for the faint of heart, but it is the key to making the install “clean”!

Step Four is to use the installer to bring the Lion’s roar to your Mac. When you go through the set-up be sure to create what will be a temporary Admin user name that is NOT the name of the user that you will be migrating back.

Then repeat Step One in reverse. You can then delete the temporary Admin user if you wish, and after you have checked that everything is working ok you should delete the User that was temporarily created on the surrogate Mac – this is done in the Users & Groups Systems Preferences panel.

Now your Mac should be fully svelte once again and ready “to climb the Mountain”!

One caveat – if you have licensed third party s/w like Microsoft Office you will be prompted to enter the license info again when you first use it. You may also have to tweak some settings like printers etc., but mostly your settings and preferences, as well as all your files, will be preserved.

If you need more guidance, chat with me when you visit West Hill House.

Tags: Mountain Lion
Posted in Mac Computer Blog | Comments Off