Your greatness is not what you have, it's what you give.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

A Day in the Country

Today was one of those glorious end of the summer days where the sun warms your heart as well as your face.

Ron and I invited Maureen to take a ride out to Cooperstown for a little field trip. Can you believe we didn't even look for a yarn store?!
Our first stop was at Fly Creek Orchards. First we listened to a little country music....

Then we checked out the tractors. We were supposed to vote for our favorite.

This was it! Although, I don't know which one won. We didn't hang around long enough to find out.

The duck pond at the orchard

Lunch was at the center of town at the Tunnecliffe Tavern.
Here's the Baseball Hall of Fame

We took a ride down to see the Otesaga Lake
It seemed as though everyone had the same idea to go sailing.
On the way out of town we stopped for a tour of the Ommegang Brewery, a Belgian style brewery where they make ales. They have a linear style of production where the raw products come into the building to the right and work their way all the way to the left through the different processes of brewing.

These are the vats where the grains and water start their process.

This is the machine that applies the labels to the bottles.

After the fermenting and bottling, the cases of ale are stored in a warming room to finish the fermenting process. This room stays a toasty temperature between 75 and 85 degrees.
Out behind the building we surrounded the fire pit to sample five different ales. It's a good thing they served it in small cups! See the tank to the far left that looks like a cow? This tank if filled with the spent grains after the first step of production and the local farmers are invited to take as much as they need to feed their livestock and fertilize their fields as a means of recycling. It's free to the farmers and the brewery doesn't have to pay to haul it off somewhere.
The tavern inside the brewery
We had a great day and even came home with a few bottles of our favorite flavors.
But remember friends don't let friends knit drunk!

1 comment:

AlisonH said...

We lived in Merrimack, NH for four years, where there's a big Anheuser factory and the Clydesdales. In all that time, we never took the tour--I mean, what the heck were we nondrinkers going to do with the free samples at the end? But I still wish we'd at least seen it.