Posts Tagged ‘open house’
Open Invite
If you are curious about what it would be like to walk our Forest Garden Labyrinth, there’s no better day than the first Saturday in May every year when The Labyrinth Society sponsors their annual World Labyrinth Day event, “Walk as One at 1.”
This year, the first Saturday falls on May 3rd, and we are hosting an open house from Noon to 2 p.m. with refreshments provided.
For me, the charm of World Labyrinth Day is the concept of people creating a wave of peaceful meditation that moves around the planet as each time zone reaches 1:00 in the afternoon.
Peace is always a worthwhile subject deserving our attention, but this year feels more deserving than ever with all the rancor being caused by the systematic destruction of democratic principles occurring by the day.
Our Wintervale Forest Garden Labyrinth is registered with The Labyrinth Society and can be found on their worldwide locator here.
We have been hosting Peace Walks on World Labyrinth Day for many years, despite the first Saturday in May always being too early in the growing season for our 11-circuit Chartres pattern to look its absolute best.
The above photo is how it appeared last year on World Labyrinth Day. That day, I started what I hope will be a tradition I keep every year on the first Saturday in May. I measured the circumference of the maple tree we transplanted to the center of the labyrinth.
In just under two weeks, I will find out how much bigger the trunk has gotten in a year. I have no idea what to expect. It’s pretty hard to notice a detail like that by just looking at its appearance.
It would make me happy if I could be taking this year’s measurement under a clear blue sky on a warm spring day. Fingers crossed for good weather…
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Come Walk
Tomorrow is World Labyrinth Day!
Here is how you can participate: Wake up nice and early to take full advantage of the day. Pick one thing on your long list of projects you want to accomplish on Saturday and tackle it with gusto, bright and early.
Your early start will afford you plenty of time to finish and clean up so you can take the afternoon off. The drive to Wintervale Ranch from most of the Twin Cities area is around an hour. If you leave about 11:00, you can arrive in plenty of time for the 1 p.m. peace walk in our beautiful Rowcliffe Forest Garden labyrinth on a day that could reach 80°(F).
In honor of the “Walk as One at 1,” we are holding an open house from Noon to 3 p.m., offering light refreshments, full tours of our trails through the woods, and especially, visits with our horses and chickens.
We hope you will fit this awesome opportunity into your Saturday goals to be accomplished this weekend.
Just contact Cyndie (cyndie@wintervaleranch.com) to let us know you are coming and she can offer direction details if you need. It will help us to plan accordingly.
Where else can you find so much excitement and peace all at the same time?
Wear your hiking shoes.
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Syrup Again
Since moving to the country and discovering some of the local treasures around us, Cyndie has purchased pure maple syrup only once a year. It’s that time again! Just a few miles south of Ellsworth, the Stockwell family taps 35 acres of maple trees and collects enough gallons of sap to supply folks with a full year’s worth of syrup, if you have containers to hold it.
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We’ve figured out the routine and bring two 2-quart Mason jars to be placed under the spigot of the large tank and filled with the dark amber bliss every April during the S & S Sugar Bush open house pancake breakfast weekend.
It’s hard to find an event pancake breakfast that isn’t pretty darn good, be it firefighters, boy scouts, legions, or service clubs, but I gotta say the fresh, hot blueberry cakes, sausage, and pure maple syrup combination we enjoyed yesterday morning tasted about as good as I can recall ever experiencing.
Our friends Mike and Barb Wilkus accompanied us, having also joined us for the live Climate Cast at MPR Thursday night and then sleeping over to be available for the Sugar Bush open house. After the scrumptious breakfast, we took a stroll through the woods to witness the number of tapped trees that were supplying the sweet maple sap.
It is impressive to consider the hundreds of gallons of sap running up through the roots of these trees when the spring temperatures are just right —warm during the day and below freezing at night. One of the Stockwell sons described how the percent of sweetness drops in time, but his grandpa would collect the later sap for a vinegar.
The syrup open house has become so precious to us, Cyndie invited more friends to stop by today so she could go again and share the event with them, too. I reckon the delicious pancakes might have something to do with her zeal, as well.
There is another precious annual event that will be happening next week for us. For the second year in a row, Wintervale Ranch will be holding our own open house as a host site for The Labyrinth Society’s World Labyrinth Day Peace Walk. Walk as one at 1.
Around the world, at each location, people will walk and visualize peace at 1:00 p.m. in their time zones, creating a wave of peaceful energy flowing around the globe.
Cyndie has been working to spruce up our labyrinth, despite the lack of growth from the barely thawed landscape. I noticed when Barb and Mike were here and we did a moonlight walk Thursday night that the overnight freezing and daytime warm sunshine was still conspiring to tip over plenty of my rock arrangements.
It sounds like we can expect some rain showers this coming week, so maybe new growth will be exploding in spectacular glory for visitors on Saturday. If the day dawns nearly as spectacular as today, World Labyrinth Day will be a wonderful opportunity to experience the best of Wintervale Ranch.
If you are reading in the Twin Cities area, I hope you will consider joining us!
Saturday, May 5, 2018 between 12:00-3:00 p.m. Please email cyndie@wintervaleranch.com to register and receive directions.
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