Apples - cheese - popcorn - oh my!!!!!!!

I hope everything is going well there.

The weather is so nice! We hit a record high of 83 degrees yesterday. That was very nice. Today is supposed to be warm and humid. Should be interesting – it’s hard to imagine going from this to highs in the 50’s but that’s what the weather forecasters are saying will happen later this coming week.

I spent Saturday (or at least a good part of it) on the road. I think that after a rough week of work, I was looking forward to just getting out and about a bit. The lower gas prices were also a bit of an excuse. Late morning I set off for Gays Mills. The apple orchards are doing a booming business. I will NOT make the apple orchard run on a weekend again – there are too many people who have the same idea and the crowds were horrible. I ended up going to 3 different orchards and had about a 15-30 minute wait in line at each of them to check out. It was really hectic. Fortunately, the orchards were geared up (for the most part anyway) so products and apples were plentiful. The service – well overall pretty good but I think the workers were getting tired too. At the one stop, I picked up Jonagold apples. The next orchard was apple cider donuts. The last orchard was a few more apples (all known for storage – McIntosh: one of mom’s favorites, and Fuji a nice eating apple), a couple of apple turnovers and some apple cookies.

Anyway, that done I headed south and stopped in Fennimore at the Carr Valley Cheese Company Store where I picked up some fresh and squeaky cheese curds, cheddar, swiss, baby swiss, and a couple of flavored cheeses. From there, it was off to Montfort where I stopped at the popcorn place (Rural Route One – a nice gift shop and popcorn shop). That stop yielded a few Christmas presents as well as a couple of their flavored popcorn types.

After that (and this is where things got really silly – as if it wasn’t enough already) as I went to Platteville where I picked up some additional tape for my window plastic and met a friend to go to the romantic movie “Nights in Rodanthe” (not so romantic when one of the lead characters dies - and sadly it was Richard Gere!…oops hope I didn’t spoil that for anyone).

Today, I’ve spent the day working mostly outside. I got all the window plastic on that I can – there are two more windows (bathroom and one in kitchen) that may be replaced yet so I didn’t want to put the time and effort into putting on plastic and then have it torn off to replace them – if they can get to it. I also tore down my container garden. The dirt is now removed from the containers and stored and the containers are hopefully going to be cleaned out with the rain that we’re expecting Monday and Tuesday. Then they’ll be stored for winter as well. It looks kind of sad without the things growing and green out there. Although it wasn’t a very large garden, it was quite nice and fun to watch and eat the produce from while it lasted.

My work continues to be a challenge. There just isn’t enough time. I need to do more one on one work with the trainee. He’s got so much to learn (and me to re-learn). I’ve found that I’ve been taking some shortcuts that I don’t want to teach him. I’d rather he learn the long way and then adjust as he becomes more comfortable with the procedures and systems.

Well, I’d better get going.

Best wishes and take care!