We get lots of things in the mail because of the business we run. We ordered one handicapped parking sign last year and you wouldn’t believe the size and quantity of catalogs we have received ever since. One catalog came in a box it was that big. I’m not joking. We get magazines about business in Vermont, about drinks and bars, about the restaurant business. I mention this because in one of these magazines recently, there was an article about how to encourage regular customers to come to your place of business. And it got me thinking and feeling thankful.

The Shoreham Inn has a wonderful, loyal, funny, and did I say wonderful, set of regular customers. We’ve even been doing this long enough that we’ve got regular Inn (as in staying the night) customers too. They are the backbone of this place, they are the reason the tourists or other one-time guests comment that they feel like they have really felt a part of a community while they dined with us. We set out, crossed our fingers, and hoped to create a pub, like an English or Irish pub would feel. But after the 200 year old building and some painting and setting the mood, the real trick was how embraced we became by the people in our community, both Shoreham and the wider local net that we serve. We haven’t taken any training courses in building customer loyalty. We don’t have a customer rewards program. But I thought I should take the opportunity and say thank you in some public forum.

So, thank you regular customers of The Shoreham Inn. Thank you for your patience, your suggestions, your criticisms, your humor, your encouragement, your willingness to be flexible, your understanding of the busy season for us and your ability to put up with longer waits and a little more chaos, your driving through snowstorms to give us some business on quiet winter nights, your offers of dishwashing and of errand-running, your bringing of herbs and vegetables from your gardens, your entertaining our out of town overnight guests, your sharing celebrations with us. We feel lucky, grateful, well-cared for and occasionally just a little bit smug. Thank you.

It’s that time of year again, Addison County Fair and Field Days time. August 10 – 14 are the dates for this year’s Field Days, located just up the road from us, in Addison,VT. This is the granddaddy of Vermont Fairs, the state’s largest agricultural fair and full of all kinds of activities, from carnival rides, cattle judging, tractor pulls, demolition derbies, fried dough, photography contests, maple syrup exhibits, handcrafts, more fried food, food contests, fruits, vegetables, flowers, horse show – you get the idea (and more fried things).

I nurse a secret love of this kind of event, being a Midwest girl at heart with vivid memories of state fairs and the world’s largest pig and live country music and pie contests. I will confess that I have never eaten a corn dog.  Innkeeping life being what it is, I’ve never actually been to Addison County Field Days, but I bug Dominic to take me every year. Partly I feel this experience is missing in his education of life in the US, mostly I just want fried dough and a look at the county’s largest green bean. One day we’ll get there.

So you will have to attend for me; come to Field Days, if you stay here at The Shoreham Inn we promise not to fry one element of your breakfast, so you can indulge to your heart’s content while watching the draft horses or handmowing, riding a ferris wheel and looking at antique farm equipment.

Swim. Swim, swim, swim, swim, swim. It’s been hot enough here for a long enough stretch, that any ideal day is organized around getting into a body of water. We’ve also had quite a few guests recently staying with us as they pick up or drop off kids going to various camps located on several lakes nearby. So I’ve got water on the brain and thought I’d just write a little post about some of the nearby choices for getting into the water yourself, or just to point out that we are well located for several popular summer camps, and a night at The Shoreham Inn before the onslaught of Parent’s Weekend at camp might be a nice treat.

Obviously there is Lake Champlain. Granddaddy lake. Shoreham sits on Lake Champlain, though there aren’t any really great spots here in town for swimming, since most of the shoreline in Shoreham is private farmland. The best spots are further north at the DAR State Park or Button Bay. The Vermont State Parks website has lots of good information on all the lakes mentioned here.

Lake Dunmore and Lake Hortonia are not far, they both have popular summer camps located on them and good spots for swimming, canoeing, kayaking, etc. Branbury State Park is located on Lake Dunmore. A little further south sees you to Lake Bomoseen, which is a large, busy lake. A little further south from there is Lake St. Catherine, a very mellow lake, popular with families in this area. About a half an hour would see you from Shoreham to any of these locations. And there are more, smaller, hidden little lakes and ponds. But, I’m only here to ‘wet’ your appetite. (I apologize, I just couldn’t resist)

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.

I have been thinking that one way to highlight things to do in this area would be to tell you what we get up to on our days off. And then I thought, hmm, I’m not sure that provides enough material for an ongoing series, unless you are interested in going to the bank, the grocery store and picking up cheese. Well, you might be interested in the cheese part, so we’ll leave that for another post.

But, this week we had a doozy of a day out and I thought I’d share the details. First of all, please note that it was 94 degrees yesterday. May 25. Vermont. Yes, I said 94 degrees. Currently I am awaiting the promised thunderstorm, but see nothing on the horizon. And it’s still 94 degrees today. Back to yesterday. First we ran errands, because people who are innkeepers AND live in a rural setting rarely go anywhere without cramming in a few things from their to-do list. Then we found ourselves in Rutland, VT and on the advice of a friend, went to Gill’s Deli. There we ordered  a ‘Hot Italian with the works’ as instructed. They do four sizes of sandwich: mini, small, large and giant. I will advise you that everyone who was ordering just for themselves was ordering a mini. The minis were more than I could eat. We got a large to share. This came in handy after our next activity.

We left the deli and drove to Killington to do the Pico Peak Trail hike. This is about a 6 mile round trip, up to the top of Pico Peak. It was gorgeous and cooler that you’d imagine, being shaded and in the mountains. (Though, remember, it was still 94 degrees outside) We saw no one except one pretty little snake and a frog. It was hard work – it’s a moderate hike, with some pretty steep areas to it. But the views were so worth it. It’s funny to be hiking across a ski area and picturing all the snow and swooshing skiers only a couple of months ago. At the top we sat on the deck of the ski hut and had our well deserved large sandwich, and had no trouble finishing it.

And then to cap the day, we stopped in Brandon, VT on the way home and got an ice cream cone (I had been angling for a creemee since about halfway down the hike, that large sandwich quickly forgotten) at The Inside Scoop, which may be the best ice cream/old-fashioned candy store/soda fountain on the planet. I resisted all the penny candy and had a sugar cone (when was the last time you had a sugar cone?) of Wilcox’s mint chocolate chip, which was completely satisfying.

We may not get many of these kind of days, but we love them when we do. And I’ve got lots more ideas so if you come to visit, I just might share them.

I thought I’d write a little post about some things to do in our neck of the woods. We are now entering the time of year when people naturally think of visiting our piece of Vermont. Which also means that we are entering the time of year when we innkeepers don’t get out and do any of the things the visitors come and see, we’re too busy tending the home fires, making beds and preparing food for their return. But, in stolen moments and certainly vicariously through their stories and experiences, we do see all the wonder that is Vermont in the summer.

One of our favorite things to do when we have a few hours off and want to get away from home is to get in the car and explore side roads, usually in search of lakes or ponds to dip into. Some of the lakes we’ve found, I’m not sure I could find again, or maybe I don’t really want to share all my secrets… But it is no secret that one of the most spectacular lakes near Shoreham isn’t actually in Vermont, it is Lake George in New York. Well, the secret may be how easy and close Lake George actually is to Shoreham. Using the Fort Ticonderoga Ferry, located 5 miles from the Inn here in Shoreham, it’s a seven minute cable ferry ride over to the town of Ticonderoga. And the very northern tip of Lake George is in Ticonderoga. It’s a long, gorgeous lake and the drive alongside it is wonderful. Last time we did it, I realized it’s the tall, tall green trees that make it feel like a different world from Vermont with it’s rolling, low green. You feel enclosed by green and it smells earthy and piney and wonderful. Yes, I realize that the town of Lake George itself (way down on the other end of the lake, 30 miles from the Ticonderoga end) has a reputation for lots of honky tonky arcades and masses of people, but you don’t have to go there unless you want to. Bolton Landing has some smaller shops and restaurants right on the lake, and there are public access points and camping locations at various points along the shore. I haven’t even mentioned Fort Ticonderoga itself, but maybe I’ll save that for another post about historic sites to explore.

One of the best parts of being a restaurant owner is all the food; the delicious, exciting, local food. We make it a priority to get as much as we can as local as we can. Maybe we are extra special lucky here in Vermont since there is so much food growing, making and creating going on around us. Even in our long winters there are storage vegetables and a greenhouse down the road that operates year round. People up here obsess about their seed catalogs. I had a long discussion last night over the bar about the virtues and mysteries of hanging tomato plants.

As the year begins to warm up it’s difficult not to get excited about the foods that become available, even if only very briefly. Fiddleheads and rhubarb are this week’s excitement. We’ve even had some early local asparagus. We went to pick up cheese from Twig Farm yesterday and were given two gorgeous, enormous duck eggs. (And the cheese, oh my, this was the first time we’d had their Mixed Drum – so delicious) If you really pay attention to what’s fresh and local it hard not to become some sort of ‘foodie’, because things you might never dream of trying taste so good when they are fresh out of the ground. Let me tell you, I had an epic battle over brussels sprouts for many, many years and in the blink of an eye a fresh brussels sprout from Golden Russet Farm changed everything. I was never a big goat cheese fan and Twig Farm and Blue Ledge Farm completely changed that prejudice. Come to Vermont and try something new, we’re just entering the growing season and we’ll make no promises about what you’ll be able to get, but that’s the fun, you have to wait and see and try what’s in front of you.

So, spring is definitely springing here in Shoreham, despite a brief episode of snow on April 28. We got a few inches, which is nothing compared to the 22 inches they got in other parts of the state…. Anyway, now back to regularly scheduled spring, which, in this particular Inn’s business, means chores. And more chores. Our busy season for rooms begins in about mid-May, so April and May are a whirlwind of every imaginable planned and unplanned chore. We’re getting the garden organized (for the first time using some outside help, and it makes me so happy I could weep), windows are being cleaned, last coats of paint are being put on the trim in the Bird Room, we have to figure out what to do about the woodpecker hole in the new Barn, the photographer has been to take photos of the new Barn Suites, the swan-neck lights can go back up to light up The Shoreham Inn sign now that we ‘really’ should be out of danger of snow sliding off the roof and breaking them. I’ll stop, this list doesn’t make very interesting reading.

Before I go, I feel I must pause and offer some sympathy to my husband, who, despite loving just about everything about making the move from the UK to America, did make one great sacrifice. His birthday is in early May, and back home the first weekend in May is a ‘Bank Holiday’ weekend – the direct equivalent of Memorial Day weekend here; a Monday off and the kick-off to summer. And so, for most of his life, he’s had a long weekend to celebrate his birthday. Instead, he’s in the midst of installing air conditioners, hosing down garden furniture and gathering metal for Green Up day recycling. One of the things we have found in making this move between countries, is that you kind of gain all the holidays, or always feel you are missing out on the one being celebrated on a different day in the other place. Rather than rejoice in Memorial Day weekend, which we do, we also feel we are missing out on the May Bank Holiday weekend. Mother’s Day – very confusing – which one do you choose for sending your mother a card? The Mother’s Day in the country you live in, or the country she lives in? (Mothering Sunday in the UK is tied to Easter. It is always a certain number of weeks before Easter and is related to the tradition of giving domestic servants a Sunday off to go and see their own families, before the craziness of preparing for Easter celebrations in their place of work. How’s that for some education here on this blog?)

I suppose, as an Inn and Restaurant, we’re here to help you celebrate it all. And ultimately it really doesn’t matter what or where your occasion occurs, if you choose to spend it with us, we are honored and will do our best to make it as special as possible.

Huh, that’s not where I thought this blog post was headed. Oh well, I’ve got chores to get back to.