Hike With A Hero

Steve invited one of his heroes to go for a walk in the woods with him. John Bates is well known regional actor and has been featured on public radio and tv in Wisconsin. He writes about the natural world and places in Wisconsin. He has written several guides on how to find and enjoy Wisconsin wild lakes, old growth forests and about our seasons. Steve and John went for a walk in our woods. John loved our trails and diversity of our land from the different tree types and bog. Steve had a great time can you tell from his smile

We are going to feature John's books in our shop. They are great reads and great guides. John's wife Mary Burns is an amazing weaver and artist in her own right. She has written a weaving book we also will be featuring in our shop.

Steve has already taken John's info from this book and visited an old growth forest in Three Lakes

Great reads for sitting on the porch or swinging in a swinging bed

Talking about seasons and the natural world the maple trees are staring and we have tapped about 3/4 or our trees. We are in the middle of a nice run of maple sap.

We have started the long job of cooking the sap down. These pots will spend 4 - 5 weeks on our wood stove percolating and boiling off the water in the maple sap. We hope to have 2 to 5 gallons of sap by the end of the maple season. How long is the season? How many runs will we get..... each year is different

In other news of making things, we bought a new sock machine this week. My helper, requested a new machine after using my 1920's finicky machines for several years. So a new machine from Missouri arrived. It is a Truknit. Truknits are a new machine just on the market. This is machine number 192. Can't wait to see everything it creates

If you have never seen the machine I use here it is. This also was new 9 years ago by Erlbacher/Gearhart that I hooked up to bike pedals. I now have machine envy looking at the Truknit but there are no pedals on the Truknit

Guests have been still enjoying what winter we have on ice. The skating continues to be good. Melting and freezing actually make for great ice conditions

Oogie welcoming an ice fisherman off the ice

Good day on ice

We continue to hope for snow but enjoying what winter we have.