Surprise! I have another interesting innkeeper day out to talk about! See, it’s not all work, work, work around here.

This week, after serving breakfast, seeing our guests on their way and then having tea and toast and watching England and the USA World Cup games simultaneously (well, watching the England game – they get first dibs in this household – and then switching over to check up on the end of the USA game, to manage to just barely see four of the most thrilling moments of sports ever) we drove to Albany, NY to get my car serviced. As I have explained previously, nothing happens around here without a chore attached.

I will pause here to say that I love my car. Here is an old picture of me with my car. I will never change my car. And if I keep up my current driving habits I will just about hit 100,000 miles as I go so blind I will have to be removed from my car. Yes, we were taking my car in to get a new battery, because I have killed the battery through lack of use. My mileage makes the whole dealership laugh. I am very happy when I am in my car. It just doesn’t happen quite often enough.

After getting the Mini all spruced up and in working order, and catching the Germany v Ghana game while we waited – we left the dealership and headed back to Saratoga Springs, which is a really lovely little town. It is also home to our closest Target, so we had to go there for a truly bizarre shopping list of odds and ends (mascara, whisk, three hole punch….). Then we headed into downtown Saratoga Springs to wander down main street, do some window shopping and then stopped at The Wine Bar, which is a gem of a place. It’s an old brownstone-type building and the inside is really nicely decorated, but they also have  small outdoor sidewalk terrace. And we sat, had some wine, delicious homemade crackers and dip and people-watched to our hearts content. One of the things I love about where we live in Vermont is how quiet it is, how pastoral our views. But once in a while a good, healthy dose of watching other people is necessary. And with a glass of wine in hand on the sidewalk of Saratoga, it was very satisfying.

The very next day we had guests from Australia show up on our doorstep, having been in Cooperstown, NY that day, and headed for Quebec the next, and it just got me thinking again about how well located Shoreham is for that kind of stop. We can give you a little taste of Vermont, a cozy bed, delicious dinner and send you on your way to do some beautiful driving and admiring of our views on your way to or from somewhere else. So next time you might be headed to the horse races in Saratoga Springs, or up to Montreal – we’re a nice little stop in the middle: 1 1/2 hours gets you to Saratoga and about 2 gets you to Montreal.

I am writing this at the end of a perfect Vermont summer day. Bright, clear sunshine. I think the high was about 74 degrees. Little breeze, not much humidity. We’ve got people here on inn-to-inn bicycling trips and I’ve just been thinking about how perfect the bicycling can be in this part of the state. So I thought I’d share the details about a fantastic event that will be happening in September for the third year, Le Tour de Farms. Plenty of time to plan in case you’d like to come participate.

This event is run as a collaborative event supporting Rural Vermont,  The Addison County Relocalization Network (ACoRN) and The Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition. The Boston Globe has just named it as one of their chosen events for a fun-filled summer.

More importantly, this event is a whole lot of fun. This year it will be on Sunday September 19th. Basically the idea is to ride your bicycle from farm to farm, sampling local foods along the way. It begins and ends here in Shoreham on our village green. At the start the riders gather on the green, where there are muffins and coffee available. There you also collect your route map, and there are routes of varying lengths, ranging from 10 – 30 miles. The start times are slightly staggered, to try and avoid too many people on the road all at once, and so that first farm doesn’t end up with 500 people there all at the same time. Next, you ride. At your own pace, stop, start, make yourself happy. The routes take you past up to about 20 different stops where you can see working farms of all types in action, sample food and drinks, and take in our gorgeous scenery. The rides all end back here in Shoreham where the Shoreham Apple Fest will be underway. The Apple Fest just began last year, so it is still a work in progress, but it will involve live music, games for kids, massage for riders, crafts and foods for sale.

The event will happen rain or shine, but we can cross our fingers for a day a little like today, where Addison County will show off all its glory and a lot of people will feel proud to live here, or jealous of those of us who do.

As promised, we have done nothing blog-worthy in the past week unless you would be interested in the great refrigerator swap-out of 2010. That was a production. We had an enormous, old, ex-country store display refrigerator here in the Inn, and it drew it’s last breath last week. So it had to be replaced, which means it needed to be removed from the premises. Ah…but we have built a grill room extension on the kitchen since the days when the refrigerator entered the Inn. We came up with several other potential plans that did not involve it having to exit the Inn; turning it into a hot tub, tossing it down the basement stairs and storing fuel in it, taking a chain saw to the front of the Inn and making a quick, new door –  before careful planning, much measuring, removing of several doors, moving a lot of furniture, three guys, two dollys and the 1985 Chevy pickup got involved. It’s out, it was painful, but it’s done.

Sorry, this post is supposed to be about cheese. Because refrigerator maintenance, while a large part of an innkeeper’s life, may not be what you would come to Vermont to see. But, you might want to come check out our cheeses. We have wonderful cheeses. I know I am partial, but Addison County in particular has wonderful cheese. I thought I’d talk about one local producer, so I can talk about others at another time (when perhaps toilet repair has featured heavily in the week’s activities, and you won’t want to hear about that either…) Today we will talk about Twig Farm. It is run by Michael Lee and Emily Sunderman, and they make fantastic goat cheeses. I have to admit, I really was not a huge goat cheese fan, but only when I moved to Vermont and started tasting the local cheeses did I learn that there is much more to goat cheese than chevre, which was all I knew. Twig Farm makes wonderful aged cheeses, blue cheeses, soft, pungent European style cheeses, all from goats milk. The first time they had us over to taste some of their cheeses and meet the goats Dominic and I fell a little bit in love with everything about Twig Farm – the cheeses are delicious, Michael and Emily are intelligent and passionate about what they do, their house and work spaces are wonderful, and they have names for all their goats, who really like to rub the tops of their heads up against your legs, and that is pretty darn cute. For a while Dominic tried to convince me we could use a goat for a pet. (Two goats actually – you have to get goats in pairs, they make friends for life and if they are separated from their first friend, they become loner goats. Very sad.)

Vermont cheese has become increasingly popular over the time we have lived here, and if you are interested in sampling locally, the fantastic Middlebury Farmer’s Market is a great place to pick up cheeses and meet and talk to the producers. If you are here when the Farmer’s Market is not in session, the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op also has a very wide selection. Another idea would be to sign up for a Vermont Farm Tour, some of which focus exclusively on cheesemakers. And finally there is a great map put out by the Vermont Cheese Council, called the Cheese Trail Map, which details all of the cheesemakers in the state and gives locations and hours of operation for those farms that do open themselves up to the public.