No Pain, No Cane

Dan and I were recently given the assignment to recane a few of our chairs. You have no idea what I'm talking about, huh? That's ok, when we were given the assignment we didn't know what it meant either.

In short, that lattice-like wooden screen that you often see on chairs is called "cane" or "caning". It's actually not wood at all, but the skin of the nonporous rattan vine. Its impermeability makes it ideal for furniture because it won't stain or react to humidity.

Behold the odd and strangely useful things you learn as an innkeeper...

We have a few chairs that feature a lovely woven cane backing. They had unfortunately taken a bit of a beating over the years though, and two out of three chairs had holes ripped through the cane. Rather than replace the whole chair, John opted for Dan and I to re-cane it ourselves. One benefit being that it's significantly less expensive, but another being that it's the greener decision because fixing an old chair instead of buying a brand new one means less resources are used. It's a win-win!

Anyway, this is how the process looks currently:
Kind of a mess. You'd think that throwing a screen into a panel would be easy, right? Not so much... First off, the directions are really vague and don't have any pictures.

Through process of elimination [and some pieces being kind of obvious] we determined that these two pieces are the spline and the cane.


See how they fit into the finished product? (By the way, that's an old, unbroken chair, not one that we've finished.)

Aside from the spline and cane, the wedge, chisel, and hammer were pretty easy to identify...

One line in the directions mentions using "4 wedges to hold the spline in place, and the fifth to pound it into the groove". How do I hold 4 wedges in one place, a fifth in another, AND somehow manage to hammer at the same time? And why in the world do I need 4 wedges to do what two of my fingers are doing in the photo above?? What kind of crazy person invented this process???

As much of a pain as this is, it's going to be neat to be able to proudly say when it's done, "Hey Bob. I caned a chair once. Did you know that?" And he'll be confused and have no idea what I'm talking about. Then I'll be able to rant on about rattan vines and permeability and spline chisels and prewoven cane and...

...I'm doing that right now, aren't I?


With Love,
~Brande N.

Memorial Weekend!

Have you seen our Special Offers page yet?

We just posted a fantastic deal for Memorial Weekend, and it highlights an event called the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival. I'm very excited about it. According to the event's website, it's the largest environmental film festival in the country. It also happens to be a touring festival, and on May 24th, it's coming to Lenox. The three hour presentation will feature literally dozens of films ranging in length from 2 minutes to just under an hour and covering various topics from the American Grasslands to Foraging to Climate Change and White Water Kayaking. Certainly an eclectic mix! There's even a list of all the movies that will be coming on tour available here. You can also watch trailers of all the movies on this page.

The Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival happens to be coming to town during Memorial Weekend, which is great news for anyone visiting the Berkshires. Why? Because there are a ton of events going on that weekend. For example:

Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare & Company
Dickey Betts at The Colonial Theatre
The Berkshire Extreme Green Festival at the Lenox Town Hall
Poolside at the Hotel Bel Air at the Barrington Stage Company
Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection at Hancock Shaker Village (free admission on Tuesday!)
Project Sprout Fundraiser and Four-Course Meal at Route 7 Grill
The Berkshire International Fiml Festival at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

Gourmet food, theatre, history, music, ecology, film, and community. Sounds like a great weekend! If you haven't made a reservation yet, feel free to give us a call and we'd be happy to help you plan your trip. It's what we're here for!

With Love,
~Brande N.

The Holy Grail of Yogurt

What could possibly be better than yogurt that is:

-Delicious and...
-Locally made...
-By hand...
-With no artificial sweeteners, flavorings, or additives...
-Using milk from ethically and humanely raised cows...
-Who are 100% grass-fed...
-On certified organic pastures?

The answer?

Nothing. Nothing could possibly be better! This is the holy grail of yogurt.

Introducing:

Sidehill Farms yogurt! I can't even tell you how good this stuff is. So good, in fact, that John ate two bowls of it over the course of a 4 hour meeting. So good that we went through almost 2 quarts over the last two days.

And it's good for you too! Pasture-raised cows produce milk that is higher in essential fatty acids such as Omega-3 and CLA. These fatty acids are linked to everything from healthy skin and nails to a decreased ricks of stroke and cancer to reduced depression. Super foods, indeed.

We're making great progress on converting our foods to local and/or organic varieties. Our coffee is locally roasted, fair trade and sustainably grown; our teas are all organic and/or fair trade; our honey is local; most of our produce is organic (soon to be local, come summertime!); our bread is local and organic; our apples are locally grown and residue free; our preserves are all locally made; even our instant oatmeal is organic!

The next and most difficult step is sourcing local and organic meats. We tried this winter and struck out, but we're hoping for better luck this time. I'll keep you posted, but in the meantime; wish us luck!

With Love,
~Brande N.

Celebrating Earth Day

Did you know that Earth Day is coming up? Yeah, I didn't either. Unlike Easter, Christmas, or even Columbus Day, Earth Day isn't a holiday that's etched into our culture in such a way that our lives revolve around it. Thus, it's easy to forget. Honestly, I've never even celebrated it. I'm a bad tree hugger.

This year, I decided to change that. I won't be throwing an Earth Day Extravaganza, organizing a protest, or even just turning off the lights; but I will be going outside.

Gasp!

I'll admit it, I spend about 85% of my life indoors. Growing up in Upstate NY, you learn rapidly that "spring" is synonymous with "punkie season" and "summer" is synonymous with "deerfly and mosquito season". (the other seasons are "everything dies" and "it's too cold to move") Now, I'm all for holding ladybugs, watching butterflies, and even feeding ants, but I am not so fond of the bugs that bite, thankyouverymuch. I'll just stay inside and read a book. Or read blogs. Or bake. Or scrub the toilet. Anything but be chased and bothered and bitten by an insect. Yuckola, man.

As I've gotten older though, I've become a bit more tolerant of the parts of nature that, well, aren't exactly ideal in my book. The truth is, everything in nature is ideal. I might see a blood-sucking malaria machine, but the daisy next to me sees a pollinator. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?

I don't think I'll ever see a punkie with eyes that deem it beautiful, but I do see it's place in the world, and I've come to appreciate it.

So, to celebrate the spirit of appreciating nature I'll be spending Wednesday outside. All day hopefully. Maybe I'll be reading, maybe having a little picnic, who knows. It's true that the buggies will probably find me*, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. I feel like the most profound thing I can do on the day that we honor the Earth is spend some time enjoying it. Even if I end up all itchy because of it.

With Love,
~Brande N.


*DISCLAIMER: This personal goal was made significantly easier by the fact that the biting insect population in The Berkshires is practically nonexistent compared to that of Upstate. Seriously, if you were to walk outside in my hometown right now, you'd be swarmed in minutes. I have yet to see any biting-bugs this year. (knock on wood!)

WHOA! Not even kidding, I just typed "knock on wood" and a mosquito flew into the computer screen and then flew away. Maybe I should have actually knocked on a piece of wood?

Flying Greener

I've never flown before. Never ever. And I'll admit that our upcoming flight to San Francisco might terrify me a bit. Alright, I'm lying. It terrifies me a lot.

Because of my fear of flying I really wanted to take a train or drive or hang-glide or be transported by UFO to California. However, for entirely logical reasons (takes too long, don't know how to hang-glide, the aliens didn't return our phone calls) Dan shot down all of those ideas. So we booked the flight.

As soon as the confirmation arrived in our inbox I felt a stab of terror in my gut and a jab of guilt in my heart. Flying is not good for the environment. Oftentimes it's inevitable (as in this case) but shouldn't we still do something to offset our impact?

Yes! We found the following resources:

TerraPass

Carbonfund

Sustainable Travel International

All of these offer a small "quiz" of sorts that details either your personal or your business's carbon footprint [Carbon Footprint: a measure of the amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is produced by a person, organization, or location at a given time].

Once you know your footprint, you pay a monetary "offset" that is donated to various green organizations and environmental projects that work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from other sources.

For example (via TerraPass):

(Click to enlarge)

You can see here that our flight emits almost 5,000lbs of CO2. Bleh.

That's equivalent to driving a 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid 10,000 miles. In other words, in the 12 or so hours we spend on a plane, we'll create as much atmosphere warming gas as a hybrid car might in a year.

The good news is that this is very easy to remedy. Just click the "skip to results" button and you'll see something like this:

For only $30 we can feel better about flying and know that our offset is going towards helpful projects like these.

It's that easy! And it's such an affordable thing that Dan and I are even considering adding the miles we put on our rental car to the tally.

For now, though, I'm off to do some more trip research. I just found out from my handy-dandy Time Out*** guide that parking is something of an art in San Francisco. I guess on-street parking is quite rare, so it looks like we'll be relying on parking garages on most days. I'd hate to be without one when we're running late for a show, so my next project is to plot them all on a map. Believe it or not, I'm excited to do this. I am weird.

With Love,
~Brande N.

***Side Note: I am slowly but surely falling in love with my Time Out guide. Maps, events, attractions, prices, address, phone numbers, hours, and some very frank reviews make for fun an informative reading. I'd absolutely recommend it if you're looking for a great pocket-sized guide to any city!

I Feel Your Pain, Little Guy...

This is the mug Dan got me for Christmas. When I gave him my Chiristmas list, my demands were as follows:
-Must be handmade
-Prefferably from Etsy
-Must be unique or quirky in some way
-Must be able to hold at least 14oz of liquid
-Must have a lid

All things considered, Dan got me a pretty a awesome mug. But I do need a lid. You see, one of the very first things I learned about being an innkeeper is that you should never expect to have a hot meal or drink between 1pm and 7pm. At least not if you're me. I have the absolute worst luck. I'll make soup and a sandwich or pour a cup of coffee or even just microwave a burrito and invariably, the second I sit down to eat, I'll get a check-in, a walk-in, a complicated 20 minute phone call, or some other crisis. Cold coffee and a a soggy, room-temperature grilled cheese do not a good meal make. Bleh.

So I set out to find a lid. I contacted the potter that made my mug, and she said that it would cost $10 plus shipping to make it and she couldn't guarantee it would fit. Bleh. I contacted another potter to see if he had a better price. Nope. He blatantly refused to do it, stating that it was too difficult.

So I decided to look for a universal lid. Something that I could just throw over my mug to give the coffee another 10 or 15 minutes of life, even if it didn't fit perfectly or match the mug.

And I found it! This fantastic, affordable, quirky website had a silicone (which I believe is a biodegradable material, but am currently researching) lid that was made to fit all mug sizes, was air tight, and was only $4! Yay! After finding that, I decided I might as well grab something else to offset the $6 shipping. I found this great little travel size metal spoon/fork/chopstick set. What a great way to avoid plastic utensils when dining on the road! And it was only $6! What a deal!

I submitted the transaction and waited for my beautiful, ecological, awesome, earth-friendly goodies to come. And I waited. And waited. And waited. Two and a half weeks later, I started to worry that I had been scammed. So I went to the website and hit the FAQ.

Ugh. Turns out that my wonderfully inexpensive, quirky online store was in Hong Kong. And my "beautiful, ecological, awesome, earth-friendly goodies" were being flown to the United States via air mail. I may as well have just poked a hole in the ozone layer myself! Ahh!

A week later, my package arrived:
And of course, it was in a plastic bubble envelope and not a cardboard box. *Sigh*

But there was good news! First of all, the utensil set was/is amazing and has already gotten used several times. And the lid? Fits like a glove. Totally air-tight and keeps my coffee toasty. Best of all, it perfectly reflects the way I felt about this whole messy transaction:
(Yes, that's right, there is a tiny, angry little man on my lid. He's actually the handle. Awesome.)

With Love,
~Brande N.