I just wanted to write a quick something about a little gem I found yesterday called Infinity Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut.
We had to go to a baptism yesterday in Millbrook, NY. We did that, ate and left. On the way back to CT, I decided that taking the scenic route up and over Rt. 44 would be a little more fun than driving down the Taconic Parkway and on to Interstate 84. Any day I can avoid driving through Danbury traffic is a good day for me. It ends up that we made a few small discoveries during our trip through Northwestern Connecticut.
There are a lot of really cool areas up in CT’s Northwest corner. There are probably too many to list and we already know about most of them. One that we didn’t know about was the cute little town of Norfolk.
We were just driving along Rt. 44, when we started climbing a hill. The road got a little narrow because there were cars parked all over the place. I slowed down and looked to the left and saw a really cool looking green building with a red sign that said, “Infinity Hall” across it. I was like, “Whoa, what is that???” I put the memory in the back of my mind to research later. As we drove through the rest of the town, I noticed that it was clean and good looking. I thought to myself that this was a little Connecticut secret that not many people know about. I bet everyone already knows about it already and I am the last one to figure it out, but it’s fun to think the way I do.
When we got back and I started looking up some stuff about the area of Norfolk, I learned that it’s a pretty outdoorsy place. You can camp and fish and hike and then go out to dinner and walk around. That pretty much sums up my life, so I figure we’ll be going back to Norfolk soon to really check it out. In the mean time, you can check it out yourself by clicking on the following links and by watching the video of Infinity Hall.
You know, it’s a funny thing. As I was standing in the shower this morning, I thought to myself that I probably wouldn’t be going to the Coventry farmers market today if it weren’t for Laura nudging me along. This will be the third event she has suggested to me in the past two weeks and all of them were fun. I think she notices how wrapped up I am in everything and gets a kick out of pulling me from my routine. Guys are dangerous creatures; if left alone, we would never leave town and just split firewood in the back yard for our whole lives. Thank the lord for women.
The farmers market was a suggestion from Laura’s friend that I told you about in my previous posts. This individual seems to have her finger on the pulse of all the cool outdoorsy things that go on in the area. She’s a great source for those kinds of events.
Since I had only skirted the area of Coventry and had never actually visited the town itself, the cruise up there was new to me. I didn’t even know they had a lake in the area. The thing I like about the location of Coventry, CT is its natural setting. There are large chunks of land that are pretty much untouched. I think those chunks are owned by the state, but I may be wrong. The lake is a good size and there are the typical smaller lake houses with larger and newer homes a bit further away. I think that’s the trend around here.
The farmers market itself is held 11AM – 2PM, every Sunday at the Nathan Hale Homestead. It goes on from June through October. It’s totally the kind of place my mother would love…old buildings from way back when that you can take tours through. People dressed up like they did back then. It’s fun.
As I was standing in the shower this morning, I imagined two little tables with a few heads of lettuce on them and no one being around. Ummm, yeah, I was wrong. Apparently, this farmers market is the cat’s meow ’round these parts on Sundays. It seems like the whole town was there. There was more than just lettuce too. People were selling maple syrup, all sorts of veggies, cheeses, yarn…all types of stuff. I’m not sure if the prices were better than the food store, but I am pretty sure the heads of lettuce were bigger. We got two of the largest heads of lettuce I have ever seen.
So, let me show you some photos. There are quite a few of them, so I hope you enjoy.
Looking East on South St., Coventry, CT
Looking West on South St., Coventry, CT
Nathan Hale Homestead, Coventry, CT
People walking around farmers market on Nathan Hale Rd., Coventry, CT
Horses pulling carriage at the Nathan Hale Homestead
Smaller horse pulling carriage at the Nathan Hale Homestead
Smaller buildings at the Nathan Hale Homestead
Nathan Hale Homestead -2
Looking back at the farmers market
Nathan Hale Homestead red house
Inside rear barn at the Nathan Hale Homestead
Old classroom inside rear barn at the Nathan Hale Homestead
Old fashioned candy from farmers market
Red cabbage type vegetable from farmers market – Forget the name of it
Beets from farmers market
Biggest head of lettuce ever from farmers market
Zucchini from farmers market
Of course, I didn’t get pictures of everything.
It was a pretty neat day. After we left the farmers market, we decided to head back up to the Dairy Bar at UCONN for some rootbeer floats. That was good. We also got a reminder of how much ice cream they give you – too much. Hey, I’m down with it.
While we were walking around the Nathan Hale Homestead, we picked up some brochures that listed all the places that have cool gardens around the area. I think that’s going to be our next adventure; visiting some gardens. Hey, with the next ten days supposed to be mostly sunny and in the 70s, I think that would be a grand ol’ time.
Today, we splendidly enjoyed ourselves over at Belltown Hill Orchards in South Glastonbury, CT picking blueberries. Boy, I hope I don’t get sick of all this fruit. There are a bunch of months left to pick-your-own.
Since we had never been to this farm before, we had to use the GPS for the last few miles. The farm is actually located right across the street from Rose’s…the one we went strawberry and raspberry picking at last week. It’s right off Matson Hill Road. If you decide to visit this farm, beware that the driveway is kind of steep.
This farm offered a nice tractor ride up to the blueberry fields. I read a little sign on the back of the trailer that said, “Tractor runs on bio-diesel.” I thought that was kind of neat. I kept trying to smell Chinese food, but all I smelled was exhaust. I guess it wasn’t running on Chinese food.
Okay, to the blueberries. We met Laura’s friend up at the bushes (by the way, one more hangout with the three of us and she is my friend too). She was already picking away. She is a blueberry fanatic, like I am. You can honestly never eat too many blueberries. The best part about picking these things is that you can get handfuls of them and stuff them in your mouth right there in the field. It’s gross, but worth it.
These blueberries were really huge. They were like small plums, they were so big. I hung a little bucket around my neck and picked and picked and picked. Towards the top of the bucket, my neck started to hurt. I am guessing that I had about three pounds in there because overall, we had about five pounds. Three pounds hanging around the neck gets to ya after a while.
You can pick blueberries all the way into August, which is cool because we will probably end up getting more.
I am really enjoying visiting all the farms around here for their pick-your-own fun. There is really a good variety through the Summer and Fall, like apples, blueberries, cherries, nectarines, peaches, pears, plums, pumpkins and blackberries. Some farms even have cut-your-own Christmas trees, which is cool.
We had a little adventure yesterday. We went to Rose’s Berry Farm in South Glastonbury to pick some strawberries and raspberries.
This is one of those events we like to do every year but consistently screw up the schedule. We have good intentions, but somewhere along the lines, we miss what we are looking for. At times, we have been pleasantly surprised by some available “pick your own” crop and went about our day full of smiles. Well, I think I have fixed the whole scheduling problem.
A few weeks ago, Laura printed out the berry, apple and pumpkin schedule from Rose’s website. The schedule is accurate for basically any pick your own farm around here. Also, after we go picking, I put the event on my Outlook calendar and make it yearly recurring. That way, we won’t miss it next year.
Anyway, the day went well. Rose’s is a pretty enormous farm. It was much bigger than I expected and we actually needed to get a ride in a truck to go out to the strawberry and raspberry fields. I liked the truck ride. Wait until you see the photos below to see what kind of truck it was.
The strawberries were very tasty, but picked over a little bit. We are pretty late in the season for them and unfortunately, many other people got there before us. We did manage to get a bunch of nice ones though. The raspberries were in plentiful supply. I ate a whole bunch of them while picking. There really are only so many you can eat while on the job, but I did my fair share.
Next up is blueberries in early July. Rose’s has tons of blueberry bushes full of blueberries, but I think we are going to try out a different farm in the area, just to see what they are like. It’s nice to experience some variety.
Here are those pics…
Strawberry field at Rose’s Berry Farm in Glastonbury, CT
Truck ride at Rose’s Berry Farm in Glastonbury, CT
So my brother is in town again. He is here for a week and (at times) likes to see me. I guess he loves me. That’s nice, because I like to see him too.
Last night, we decided to go out to eat at Houlihan’s up in Glastonbury. I kind of like that place and the food is good. The only problem was that when I pulled into the Houlihan’s parking lot, the place was closed. I have no idea why. I sure hope they didn’t go out of business or something like that. My brother was in his car waiting for me. I drove around to meet him and told him that I had another place in mind right down the road.
We drove down Glastonbury Boulevard and made a right into the J. Gilbert’s parking lot. I have actually been wanting to go to this restaurant for some time because it looks pretty cool from outside. I always see a packed parking lot, so I usually avoid it. Last night I wanted to give it a shot.
We walked into the restaurant and found that even though there was a full parking lot, there were a whole bunch of tables open. I guess many of the cars belonged to people who liked to hang out in the bar area.
Okay, so here is my review of the restaurant:
- Good service, good atmosphere, good food, decent drinks
- Definitely not worth the money
Between the two of us, we spent over $100. That’s just crazy because all we had were two drinks, two salads, two entrees and two desserts. The entrees were “light,” if you know what I mean. Don’t get me wrong, everything was very tasty, but a little sliver of this and just a few of that doesn’t really explain the $25 plus price tag for the entree. That kind of ticks me off, because I was freakin’ starving last night. I wanted to be fed.
Listen, if you are an independent restaurant and have a really talented head chef who brought his or her own menu with them when they arrived, go for it and charge an arm and a leg for what you’re serving. The average diner doesn’t know how to put a price tag on that. I am thinking of our last dinner up at the Mayflower Inn. It was so unique it was incredible. I wish I took a picture of it.
But, if you are a chain restaurant, don’t charge so much. What’s going to happen is you are going to get a lot of one time customers who leave to never come back. Eh hem.
I gotta tell you again, really nice restaurant, great service, good food, okay drinks, but no way worth the money.
When my parents were up visiting a few weeks ago, they brought up the idea of going out to get some ice cream. I thought it was a great idea…I just didn’t know where any ice cream places were. I think there are a few Friendlys around, but that’s not the kind of ice cream place they were talking about.
The other night, after our walk, Laura and I decided to get in the car and drive to the next town over to see if there were any obvious ice cream places. If there were, we were going to pull over to eat some. Unfortunately, there weren’t any. It’s odd, there’s a nice lake and a little bit of a vibe. Strange that there’s no ice cream places.
A few hours later, I decided to hop online and look for a famous ice cream place I heard about at Uconn. I didn’t know the name of it, but after a while, I found the one that my friend had told me about. It’s called the “Uconn Dairy Bar.”
Uconn has a big agricultural school and I guess part of that school is making superb ice cream for their students to enjoy. Well, not just their students…people from all over.
Now, you know that once I found the ice cream place over at Uconn, I put a little visit to just that spot on my agenda. We went over yesterday and enjoyed some ice cream. Laura got the pistachio and I got half vanilla and half strawberry. It was pretty damn good.
I was going to call this post, “My Mini-Garden.” Then, I thought of the word “micro” and figured that it sounded much more “green” and “organic,” so I used that. Now I can be like those hippie folk up in Ithaca who live in their “ecovillage.” All I need now is a guitar and a little chair.
Okay, the truth of the matter is that Laura found a squirrel sitting in the bucket where my strawberry plant is planted. He was sitting there, not eating strawberries, but eating the actual plant. We have some very badly behaved squirrels. Very bad indeed. I knew where this was headed, so I had to do something.
I walked around the yard and found all the scrap wood I could muster up. Then, I ran out to the hardware store and got some of that rabbit (or whatever it is) fencing and got to work. After a few hours, this is what I cam up with…
Empty fenced in mini-garden
Empty fenced in mini-garden – pic 2
Fenced in mini-garden with strawberry, squash, zucchini, beans, etc…
Fenced in mini-garden with strawberry, squash, zucchini, beans, etc… – pic 2
I know it isn’t perfect, but I needed to figure out something fast on such short notice. I didn’t think the squirrels would actually eat the plants. Geez.
The fencing is stapled nice and tight to the sides. The top part is just a piece of fencing held down by bungee cords. I think it’ll be okay.
I have a feeling it’s going to get mighty crowded in that little garden, but at least I won’t have any issues with the vermin. Next year, I think I will limit my little mini-garden to just strawberries.
I found this funny video on YouTube about bottled water. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the negative impacts all those bottles have on the environment, from the creation of the bottles to their disposal. The actual water inside the bottle isn’t much better. Chances are, you are probably getting filtered water from New Jersey.
After I watched this video, I started thinking, “Are people so terrible for drinking bottled water?” You know, half of the time, people drink bottled water when they are on their lunch breaks from work (or similar situations). They are sitting in some pizza place and really aren’t that turned on by drinking a bottle of soda or juice with their food. What’s left to choose from? Water. They don’t want to go ask for a little paper cup worth of tap water from the guy standing behind the counter, so they buy the bottle. They buy it because it’s available.
My feelings are, if you’re going to beat up on the bottled water industry, you better start beating up on the soft drink and juice industry too. I’m not saying this because I like bottled water, I’m just trying to be fair. I don’t think I have ever even bought bottled water. I wouldn’t exactly say that’s because I’m intelligent, probably just because I didn’t want to spend the money.
Costs add up fast in the produce aisle. Save some of that money by growing food yourself. Most herbs and vegetables grow great in containers – so they’re perfect additions to a sunny deck, patio, or balcony.
Not only can insects be a nuisance in your garden, but they can ruin a perfect picnic or hike. Here are a few totally green, home remedy suggestions to repel insects without using toxic chemicals.
250,000 Tiny Greenhouses, Each Containing One Head Of Lettuce
During the early 1900s, Parisian urban gardeners employed the bell jars — called cloches — to protect their plants and raise salad greens early in the season. This was known as a practical guide to “intensive” farming the French way.
Most environmentally aware Americans would love a personal organic vegetable garden, but how many people actually have the time to cultivate one?. Thanks to a San Francisco-based company called MyFarm, Bay Area denizens can pay a weekly fee to have a backyard garden designed and maintained by professionals.
Tea Tree oil is a great multipurpose treatment to use on a number of ailments. Whether you are looking to repel insects in your garden or if you are looking to clear up your acne, tea tree oil is a great alternative.
It has taken me forever to write this post. I don’t know why. I guess I thought it was never really all that important, but the more I think about it, the more I get bothered. Also, since when have I written about only important things?
I would say we haven’t been to Whole Foods in about two months. The last time we went there, I got extremely annoyed. Also, a few times before that, Laura got really annoyed. Both times were really annoying, but my “annoyance” meter is a little taller than Laura’s.
Let me tell you what annoyed me first. Okay, the prices at Whole Foods are high. We knew that when we started going there. I kind of let it go because I felt like I was doing something good for society, whatever that means (you know, the whole organic, green, blah blah blah). The problem is that I always felt like the store was ratcheting up the prices just enough for us not to notice the increases. That is annoying in itself.
During our last visit, we picked up a few items and put them in the cart. When we got to the produce area, I took it upon myself to go grab some asparagus. When I walked over to the asparagus section, I picked up a bunch and then looked at the price. It said $4.99 per pound. I instantly felt my face getting red. I put the asparagus down and walked over to get some “Silk” creamer. When I looked at the creamer, it said something like $3.89. This was for the tall, skinny jug. I put the creamer down and went back to Laura all ticked off. I said, “This place is a freakin’ rip off.” She didn’t dispute that. I asked her if we couldn’t get this stuff someplace else for half the price. I got especially mad at how much this store was trying to charge for a brand name item that costs so much less in other stores.
We paid for what was in the cart and haven’t been back since. I really hate the feeling of being ripped off.
What Laura was getting angry at was the people, meaning the other shoppers. I am sure you can visualize the totally oblivious fellow shopper that walks right in front of you while you are reaching for something off the shelf. These are the same people who cut you off on the highway and when you try to chase them down to “talk about it,” they scurry off like little rats. Needless to say, we felt like the other shoppers were a tad bit on the rude side. I guess we don’t feel too bad for not shopping at Whole Foods anymore.
The other day, we had to go to Wal-Mart to get kitty litter. Wal-Mart is the only place that we have been able to find that sells the scent-free stuff. Our little kitty cat is allergic to the scented stuff.
While getting the kitty litter, we grabbed a few grocery items. When we walked up to the produce area, I saw asparagus for $1.77 per pound. I almost freaked out. Now, I’m not an idiot. I know that organic food costs more than “conventionally grown” food (as Whole Foods likes to call it). $4.99 per pound is a little much of an increase from $1.77 per pound, organic or not. I don’t care what it is, I’m certainly not a fool.
I asked Laura what would be so bad about doing our food shopping at Wal-Mart from now on, as long as it was in the morning to avoid the crowds. She couldn’t find any reason not to.
Since we stopped shopping at Whole Foods, I have gone food shopping at Wal-Mart twice. Both visits were fairly pleasant. I haven’t been annoyed by any fellow shoppers and have actually found them pretty friendly and easy to talk to. I also especially like toying around with the cashiers, something I could never do at Whole Foods because they just don’t do that.
Remember that time I told you about our first visit to Whole Foods? It was the time I walked out of the store after paying $89 for one bag of groceries. Well, I went shopping at Wal-Mart yesterday and got half a cart of groceries for $87. Now that’s amazing.
It seems like I am ripping on Whole Foods an awful lot here. It’s just that I am still annoyed at how they tried to take me for a ride with their absurd prices. I haven’t even mentioned the time that I saw a container of ice cream for $8. I mean seriously. Someone would have to be a moron to pay that much for one of those shrunken down half-gallon sized containers of ice cream. It was a regular brand name too, so you could easily compare prices with another store. I came so close to taking a picture of it with my cell phone to post here. I really should have.
When I got back from my last visit to Wal-Mart, I pulled out a half gallon container of juice. I held it up and asked Laura to guess how much I paid for it. She said $4. I said, “Wrong. One dollar.” Now that is neat.
So, what am I supposed to do? Continue shopping at Whole Foods and get ripped off or contribute to the Wal-Marting of America? I know there are stores in the middle, like Stop and Shop, but I have never really been a fan. I actually prefer Wal-Mart over them. You never know when you might want to buy a kayak and underwear while you are food shopping.
You know, I am starting to feel pretty good about going over to Wal-Mart. The people seem fun and they don’t cut you off while you are shopping.
