We opened up the apple store today – two weeks earlier than originally planned – but the apples were ready so we had to be.

It started out a bit rough – Jared got up early to make 14 caramel apples – 4 had been requested so we figured we’d be okay – you don’t want to make too many with the heat –the caramel sags with humidity. Once he finished we received a call requesting 7 more – back downstairs to heat the caramel and outside to pick a few more apples.

9:00 – we’re open! I only have Viking’s for sale – I promised people five kinds of apples and i just have one! ahhh! Unfortunately for us, the weather wasn’t working with us to make our opening morning run smoothly. It was raining just enough to keep the apples wet delaying dry time which also delays sorting.

9:01 – our first customer of the season arrives – I still don’t have much for apples. Luckily, it was the 7 caramel apple order. Turns out, she completely lucked out! She had no idea that today was our opening day and that we typically don’t open until mid-August. She had some family visiting and she wanted them to try the caramel apples so she thought of us. It was my lucky day because she didn’t want any apples.

By 9:15 I had some apples in stock and I was feeling okay.

The rest of the day ran fairly smoothly. We had a customer here and there and were able to accomplish a lot – like getting up the rest of the signs and even the barn quilt hung!

One thing you may notice as you pull into our orchard will be parts of the driveway coned off. This is so the girls can still have a little space to chalk and play without me worrying quite so much about cars. The girls also really enjoy chalking on the cones – of course, always pushing the limit!

New Product

You will see some new products at the orchard this year. The first that I want to tell you about are the Iron Art Glass. You can see a few hanging in between the gourds Diane dyed and painted for birdhouses. I mixed in a few more between the hanging plants on our little deck. They are just stunning up close and they are all handmade. The perfect addition to a window or garden nook. A variety of amazing products from Four Elements can also now be purchased at the orchard. We have herbal teas, infused oils, some soap, body butter bars, anointing perfume, moisture cream, and lip balm. I strongly recommend reading more about Four Elements HERE but one of the great things is that all these products are made close by in Baraboo, WI. I just love to support local! The other new thing I want to tell you about this season are ‘Grow-A-Note’ plant-able greeting cards from Greenfield Paper Company. These are just fantastic – seeds are part of the paper of these cards so after you send them instead of throwing the card away the receiver can plant it! A card and a gift in one!

These are just a few of the new things you can find at the orchard this year! Hope you can find some time to visit us tomorrow between 10 and 5 to check it all out! We still have LOTS of caramel apples! Yummy!

The rumors you’ve been hearing around the last few days are TRUE! Lapacek’s Orchard is opening two weeks early! We went around and tested a few of the early varieties and they are good to be consumed – fresh or cooked. We will be open the next two weekends – Saturday from 9-6 and Sunday 10-6 at our NEW location – N1959 Kroncke Rd, Poynette, WI. If you need apples during the week, just give me a call and we can set up an appointment (608) 635-4780. Already craving our deliciously famous caramel apples? No worries – we’ll be making some for this weekend! If you know for sure that you want some please email me (lapaceksorchard@gmail.com) with how many nuts/no nuts you would like. We don’t want to make too many with the warm weather and all.

I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks of the new location! Everyone has been working hard to make it a fantastic experience for all that visit!

I’m a little behind posting pictures of the barn quilt so you’ll probably be getting all the colors fairly close together. With how humid the summers been it’s been a challenge doing four coats of paint on everything – drying time has been extended drastically! I switched to Frog tape for the purple because I heard that it works better for straight lines.Coat 1 Four coats are on…Time to pull off the tape!

Now onto the Red…

Now that I have all the coats of primer on, it’s time to add some color!

The first color for the barn quilt was Jack O Lantern! Coat 1 Four coats are on. Now the tape has been removed! Yeah! One thing I learned after the first color of paint was to switch to FROG tape. It helps keep the edges much straighter than the blue tape did. Here I have the quilt taped off for color two – stay tuned for PURPLE!

I’ve been busy this week painting a Gigantic Cow for Sassy Cow Creamery. They’re going to be making into a ‘milking cow’ for their place and needed it to be ready for their big event – The Sassy Cow Creamery Farm Olympics. I was happy to help!The first step was to find a picture of a cow that I could use. I redrew the picture above onto a small sheet of paper and projected it onto two sheets of 4x8 plywood. Then I primed the entire cow. The next step was to paint all the white portions of the cow. The pink and black came next! And here is the final image of the cow! Now, Sassy Cow will pick it up and cut the cow out and attach the two pieces together to make it into a standing ‘milking cow’. You’ll have to stop by the creamery to find out what I’m talking about!

Are you wondering what I’m talking about already? Well here’s the ‘About the 48-hour film project’ directly from the website:

“The 48 Hour Film Project is a wild and sleepless weekend in which you and a team make a movie—write, shoot, edit and score it—in just 48 hours. On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week.”

Cities all over the world get chosen as ‘hosts’ of the film project – here are the cities for 2010: http://www.48hourfilm.com/tour/ Then some of the top films made will head to the Cannes Film Festival in France!

Why am I telling you about all this?

Well…one of the cities this year is Madison, WI. On Thursday night, Jared sent me an email with a link to Craig’s List to see if it was something we should do. Here’s what the Craig’s List ad said:

Hi,
We are entered in the 48 hour film project this weekend and desperately need locations to shoot at. Depending on the genre we pick, it would be particularly useful to have some farm land and/or out buildings to use. Also if anyone has a business location that we could use during the hours that it is closed that would be amazing. Thanks in advance!
Giraffe in the City

Well, of course this sounded like something our orchard could handle. So, I sent them an email back offering our location and sure enough – they came on Saturday morning. When they arrived I gave the group a quick tour of the orchard – I think they were pretty excited by all we had to offer. I did manage to snap a few pictures of the filming taking place – I really didn’t want to screw up any shots or anything (they only have 48 hours) so I didn’t hang out as much as I would have liked.

Here they are using our fabulous camper for one of the scenes… They set up their work station in the new addition portion of the shed. And they used the now-empty cooler for shooting most of the movie (the door is closed – they’re rolling… You can’t have a location with a tractor tire playground and NOT use it for one of the scenes! If you want to see the screening of Giraffe in the Cities film and the other 48-hour film projects, they will be showing at the Orpheum theatre in Madison this Thursday, July 22nd at 6:00pm. A second group of films will be starting at 8:30. To find out more check out: http://www.48hourfilm.com/madison/

Just another exciting day at the orchard!

Wow, I looked at the calendar today and realized we’ll be officially open in just one month. Technically we always say that opening day is August 15th but I was looking at the calendar and saw that is a Sunday. Might as well open for business on a Saturday – August 14th.

You won’t want to miss opening day either! LOTS of new things at the NEW location AND Jared already has plans to make a yummy batch of cider donuts.

What are you looking forward to this apple season!?

In a previous post on my crafting blog, I talked about creating a barn quilt to hang at the orchard. Well, the process has begun and I plan to keep you all ‘in the know’ on how it’s progressed and have some basic instructions if you ever feel the urge to make one yourself!

Step One: My husband went to Menard’s and purchased two pieces of 4’ x 8’ treated plywood – top grade. He then put the boards together and framed the back out with treated 2x6’s (specs say 2x4’s but we happened to have 2x6’s laying around).

Step Two: Coat the ENTIRE piece (sides too) with high quality exterior primer – I used latex. I also put on four coats to seal it real well.

Step Three. Using a ruler and a level, I drew on the quilt design for my barn quilt. I am going to be painting a slightly tweaked ‘Constellation’ quilt block for the orchard. I know I could have used an more apple-y pattern since it’s going on an apple orchard but I just really liked this block and the rest of the family agreed.

Step Four. This is the last step I’ll talk about in this post. Using painter’s tape I taped off the design of the first color (it will be orange) of the quilt block. I had to use a straight edge and razor blade to get the points in the middle really nice.

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I am not the only one that is Columbia County’s Barn Quilt Guinea Pig – Becky Gutzman is also one of the lucky firsts. She shared some pictures of her barn quilt with me and gave me permission to post about it.

Primer Coat – Becky did hers a bit differently – she painted each board separately first and then will be putting it together in the end. It will be easier to work with a 4’ x 8’ piece versus a 8’ x 8’ piece.

drawing the quilt pattern

Becky gracefully answered a few questions I had for her as well.

When did you first hear of barn quilts?

I had read about the Iowa Barn quilt project in farm magazines several years ago. As I heard of other Wisconsin counties doing this, I thought I would love to have one on out farm.

taping the design

Becky painting the third coat of white in the H’s

What made you want to create a barn quilt to hang on your farm?

Our road is fairly well traveled for a town road, and our barn is very visible from the road; I thought it would be a great place to have one.

removing the tape!

Why did you choose the design that you did?

4-H has been an important part of my life: I’ve been a 4-H member/leader most of my life, and my first job out of college was as 4-H educator for Columbia County. Our local 4-H club (Welsh Prairie Livewires) is celebrating 80 years this year, so I chose a 4-H quilt pattern. Painting is complete! Now she just has to hang it on her barn.

I’ll be posting more pictures on the progress of my quilt and maybe we’ll have some pictures of Becky’s barn quilt hung later too!

Wow!  I can’t believe I’m up earlier enough to actually get this posted!  I’m about to head out to be a vendor at the 2010 Poynette Historic Home  and Garden Tour/Arts and Craft Fair. 

If you want to go on the tour – the tickets are only $7.00.  It features gardens, historic homes and a self-guided walk through one of Goose Pond’s premier prairies.  Above is a picture of one of the gardens on the 2008 tour.

It is free to attend the Arts & Crafts Portion of the day.  This is where I’ll be with many of my items you’ve seen me post about – jewelry, quilts, patchwork belts, owls and paper dolls on the go!

Lunch is also available for purchase from the VFW/American Legion from 11am-2pm.  Lunchtime music will be provided by members of the bluegrass band Moldy Jam & Gray Cats!

Hope to see you at the fair!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!  I wanted to share with you something that is sort of related to the orchard along with SUPER FUN today…

For those who haven't followed the story, it's well worth reading! Three little meerkats from Niftyknits have been travelling around the world, staying with friends from Etsy's ETTEAM and collecting souvenirs along the journey.Some of you may remember that I was lucky enough to have Alchemy visit good old Poynette, WI. Here are some of the stories of her visit if you missed them earlier:

Alchemy the Traveling Meerkat has arrived at Lapacek’s Orchard

Alchemy gets a view of the Orchard and visits Packerland!

Alchemy learns to Quilt

Alchemy's Last Day

I wasn’t the only one lucky to have a fantastic, fun filled visit with the lovely Alchemy, many other etteam members were able to experience her as well. – For the interactive version of Alchemy's map CLICK HERE

knitted meerkat

To enter to win Alchemy (and all the fantastic items she collected on her travels) – be sure to go to the etteam blog: http://etsytreasuryteam.blogspot.com/2010/06/big-etteam-giveaway-niftyknits-alchemy.html, visit the shops and comment on your favorites!

***This giveaway will end on Monday, JULY 5th at 12Midnight PST and the winner will be announced on the Meerkat World Tour Page and here on the ETTEAM Blog. *** The winner will be chosen by Random.org.

ONLY ONE MORE DAY TO ENTER!