Focht Family Blog

Obviously I am behind AGAIN! :)

Between Vermont and Boston we had a couple of stops. One of them was a visit to one of the Garnets, Stefanie, where she taught Samantha about horses and caring for them. Here is Samantha watching one of the horses, Jezebel…

Stefanie had Samantha help her feed the horses and muck out the stables and lead the horses in and out of their stables. Stefanie’s son Diego decided he was going to show Samantha how to take the manure out once the stables were mucked. Here is Diego with his own wheelbarrow…

Here is Samantha learning how to brush the horses… I think this was Lacrosse…

And a picture of Samantha and Stefanie leading one of the horses to the corral…

Thank you Stefanie for such a great day full of education! :)

The last tour of the day was at Cabot Creamery. They have tastings of all of their cheeses once you enter the store. Josh and Timmy decided they needed to pose in the cow at the front door…

And of course we had to have the rare three headed cow…

Once again the tour starts with a movie. This one talks about the cooperative of dairy farmers that contribute to the cheese and the measures that they take to have consistency. Here is the room that the movie is shown covered in the many ribbons they have won for their cheddar cheeses…

Today they were making 50% reduced fat cheddar that was going to the west coast. The difference is that they send orange cheeses to the west coast and the cheeses on the east coast are white. The cream that they remove from the cheese to reduce the fat is used for sour cream. Here is a picture of the curds being stirred….

Here are the sour cream containers coming down the belt and being packaged together…

And lastly the boxing machine that boxes up the blocks of curds…

After this tour we were all a bit worn out and the kids were crashing from the sugar overload earlier. On the way out of Vermont we saw one of the coolest things we have seen since being on the road. Of course the unfortunate part is that I was not camera ready. As we were driving through the back roads getting back to the highway a large black animal came running out of the woods. It was a black bear!! It ran across the street in front of us and was only about 75 feet from us!! I am so sorry I couldn’t get the camera out in time. We slowed down by where it went back into the woods on the other side but I couldn’t see it to get a picture.

The dogs decided that the day had been long for them as well. As we were driving through New Hampshire I looked down to see that both of the dogs were napping and that Dory was using Tinkerbell as a pillow…

Okay… I was having an off day. Cold Hollow wasn’t pressing today so all we could do was look at the machinery and watch a video of what happens to make cider and spend LOTS of money. Their cider donuts were featured in Gourmet magazine as one of the best 4 donuts in the country. They were very good as was the cider.

On to Ben & Jerry’s… as soon as we got out of the RV the kids spotted cows!!

Here is a picture of the milk, cream, and sugar on the way in…

Once starting the tour you are lead to a room where you watch a short film about the start of the company. Here is a picture of the room…

After the film I wasn’t allowed to take pictures! :( But… they show you the process of how they mix the ingredients into the ice cream. And then you go to the tasting room where you get a big scoop of ice cream. Today was a triple caramel ice cream that is a new flavor. Everyone liked it but after eating it I didn’t have any room for more ice cream. :)

As we left the tour there was a lid that you could pose in. Here is Nathan and Samantha posing…

Of course we didn’t realize that there was a fire until we started walking back to the RV. There were 4 firetrucks at the back of the building. Here they are trying to put out whatever was on fire. Nathan thought it looked like the trash compactor…

Before going to the RV we headed to the Flavor Graveyard to see the headstones of flavors that have been discontinued. Here is my favorite headstone…

It says… “Fresh picked peaches trucked from Georgia tasted great but didn’t last, ‘Cause Georgia’s quite a-ways away & trucks don’t go that fast.”

Here is the ice cream RV. The original one burnt to the ground. I tried to talk the kids into trading RVs but they didn’t like that idea…

Well…. I didn’t read the website very well. It turns out that the cafe is only open at 8:30 in the summer season which doesn’t start until July and the first tour doesn’t start until 10:00. Since we were up and had a long list of places we wanted to go, we decided to just create bears when the store opened at 9:00 and skipped the tour. Here is my mom with the kids on the way in….

Here are the kids kissing the hearts that go into the bears…

Here is Timmy filling his dino….

Joshua chose a light blue teddy bear but was shy about pushing the pedal so I had to push it for him so I didn’t get pictures of him. Here is Samantha stuffing her pink bear…

My mom decided to pick out teddy bears for my neices. Here is Joshua helping to stuff the bear for Ashleigh…

And here is Timmy helping to stuff Meghan’s bear…

On Sunday we left our camp and spent a couple of days with Nathan’s parents at their camp. On Tuesday we left and drove from upstate New York to Vermont. Here is a picture of one of the beautiful rivers we crossed over….

And another of Lake Champlain as we crossed over into Vermont…

Tonight we are sitting outside of the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. Tomorrow we have a long day of tours planned. We are starting out with the teddy bears, then heading to Cold Hollow Cider Mill, then to Ben & Jerry’s (I am hoping that I like the flavor they are giving out tomorrow), then to Cabot Creamery. After all of the tours we will be heading to Manchester, NH so that we will be near to one of my Garnet friend’s houses. She has generously offered to teach Samantha about horses and let her help with the morning chores on Thursday so she can earn her horse badges. :)