Wells, Vermont • 802.325.2829
Over 215 Five Star Reviews ▪ 100% Guest-Focused ▪ 52% Repeat Guests This Year
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The Colors of Autumn in Vermont will be Spectacular! |
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Hello Everyone!
Fall may be the best time of the year at Pond Mountain Inn. Warm days, crisp nights, colorful foliage— all giftwrapped in a perfect package…. watching the leaves transition from bright reds into yellows and oranges – nature’s palette unfolds before your very eyes. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Walking the pumpkin patches and rambling through apple orchards while inhaling that crisp clean Vermont mountain air is why we all wait for autumn.
All our best,
Kay & Glenn
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We drove over two hours for 24 lbs. of Rob Rinadli’s organic garlic—we took home three varieties of hardnecks, and seeds for 50 plants that we must plant sometime next month. More on that in our November Newsletter. Ever try garlic scrambled eggs—sounds crazy, right? Delicious!!
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We’ll take you to the best apple orchards in Vermont. Our favorite—Champlain Orchard, one of the oldest continuous operating orchards in Vermont has over 140 apple varieties with distant views of Lake Champlain. Mad Tom Orchard in Manchester is closer, and more intimate.
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Champlain Valley Mushrooms: Nature’s Powerhouse is the title of last winter’s article in Edible Green Mountains. In the summer they harvest over 150 lbs. of mushrooms a week—we take 2-3 lbs. Their Cream of Mushroom soup is amazing! Click on the photo to read the article.
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Perspective Comes from Encountering Something Completely New... |
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Our Breakfasts Just Keep Getting Better! |
We are proud to announce that we now exclusively serve Dakin Farm cob-smoked bacon & big link smoked sausage. With over 200 years of history, Dakin Farm has perfected slow smoking meats over smoldering corncobs. Their bacon is lean, crisp and rich with natural meaty flavor, and thick-sliced the way bacon was made long ago. Boston Globe made it a top pick from sources east of the Mississippi. |
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Bee's Knees Week at Barr Hill... |
PMI is proud to be a participating venue! What is Bee’s Knees Week? In a nutshell, it’s… (1) a celebration of the bee's knees cocktail, (2) a spotlight on the importance of bees in our food and drink system, and (3) a community of bartenders working together to save the bees. A Bees Knees is a Prohibition Era cocktail made with gin, fresh lemon juice, and honey. Join us... Sept. 23 – Oct. 3, 2021.
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Lake George Steamboat Cruise... Again! |
This time we cruised the lake on The Mohican, built in 1908, we viewed stunning mountain wilderness areas, islands, historic mansions and the beauty of the lake itself was spectacular on this last day of summer. We’ll be back one more time at the height of the foliage season next month!
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Connecting Our Guests to New Experiences… |
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T.M. Ward Coffee Announces New Pond Mountain Inn Blend! |
“T.M. Ward Coffee is proudly served at Pond Mountain Inn. We worked closely with the owners Kay and Glenn Dunn to develop this "Exclusive Blend" served every day at their spectacular Inn located in Wells, Vermont. Guests staying at the inn have enjoyed this dark, rich, full-bodied coffee so much throughout the years that Kay and Glenn wanted to make it easily available to their guests to purchase year-round!” Enter "pondfree" at checkout to get free shipping!
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Billings Farm and Museum • Woodstock, Vermont |
This Year's Best Find!! Billings Farm is the gateway for interpreting Vermont’s rural culture and agrarian heritage offering diverse, interactive programs that focus on rural life, work, and land stewardship as reflected in the traditions and values of 19th century farm families. The Farm & Museum features the farm of the historic Billings estate and serves as the agricultural counterpart to Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. Do not miss the thirty-minute historical movie.
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (just across the street, and Vermont’s only national park), where you can explore 555 acres of forest, tour a mansion that was home to three conservationist families across nearly 200 years, and contribute your voice to an ongoing conversation about what it means to be a steward of the land. Your visit will require 3-4 hours.
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Vermont Wagyu Tasting at Pond Mountain Inn |
We’ve discussed Vermont Wagyu extensively here in our newsletters and on our website. And, here’s little bit more… This is a great abbreviated article below, The Ultimate Guide to Wagyu Beef, the World’s Most Luxurious Steak, by Mary Squillace; Mary explains it perfectly in 220 words!
What is Wagyu beef? Simply put, Wagyu means Japanese cow, But the straightforward definition belies a subject riddled with misinformation. For starters, it’s pronounced wah-gyoo, not wah-goo, a mispronunciation that’s common even among American Wagyu farmers that I too mispronounced before reading this article. But, Scott, our guest, got it right!
And Wagyu isn’t an umbrella term for just any Japanese cow. The luxury version of Wagyu we all want on our plates refers to a specific breed of Japanese cattle with special genetic qualities. There are four breeds native to Japan. Of those four breeds, one of the breeds is genetically unique—Wagyu, it has a genetic predisposition to create this crazy marbling of fat on inside of muscle tissue. No other livestock does that. Think of your average piece of steak. Chances are, it’ll have a fat cap on its outside. With Wagyu, the cow metabolizes the fat internally, so it’s integrated within the muscle. The result is a rich, luscious cut of beef that practically dissolves once it hits your tongue. “When you have very high-end Wagyu, you barely want to cook it. The middle you want to keep as raw as possible. But even if it were cooked medium or medium-well, it would still be juicy. slice it super thin so it melts in your mouth.
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Seven Springs Garden & Sculpture Park • Manchester, Vermont |
This was the most impressive garden we’ve ever visited—"simply magnificent," is an under-statement! Four of our recent guests returned and said the same thing…
The land on which Seven Springs Gardens (privately owned) now sits has a history dating back to the beginning of Vermont. The gardens have a rich history, and was part of a thirty-six square mile tract of land that dates back to 1761. Fast-forward to 1923, the property was purchased by the Doubleday publishing family as a summer retreat, two years later in March 1925, the property was featured on the cover of Country Life magazine (I tried to find the cover). You can read more about the property when you visit the gardens! The Gardens close for the season after this weekend, but I’ll try persuading the owner to allow our guests to visit through October. The distant views from the property of the Green Mountains in October will be spectacular!
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A Vermont Stone Wall... at Seven Springs Garden |
Earlier this week we took our guests to the Billings Farm & Museum—one of their curators mentioned there is an estimated 125,000 miles of stone walls in Vermont, and twice that in all of New England.
The building a stone wall… Both single and double walls were built upon foundations of small stones placed close together in trenches. Single walls were built two or three stones wide. Farmers knew from long experience that “You lay one stone over two and two over one if you want your wall to stand,” so they made sure the joints at each level were covered by the stones of the next. He filled the spaces with small stones and topped the wall with flat stones to keep the snow melt out. These stone walls can stand for centuries only requiring minor repairs.
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"The Perfect Cheese Board" |
Not my best photography, but love the ‘cheese board design’. It gives all of us some great ideas, and if you need a large slate cheese board, we know just the place… Can anyone guess where I took this picture? The answer can be found beneath the last photo... |
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Shelburne Museum Toy Shop |
The Toy Shop, constructed on site circa 1949, is a remarkable example of “continuous construction” *, a building style common throughout New England. Inside The Toy Shop, displays an array of children’s playthings: transportation toys, mechanical banks, an operating model train, dolls and doll accessories, and wooden toys typical of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This is arguably the finest "toy collection" in the United States!
*Architectural historians have termed the style, consisted of numerous farm buildings all connected into one continuous structure. Houses, ells, sheds, barns, and other outbuildings all were combined to form one long building. This architectural design common in New England, date back to the 17th century. This section of the property is architecturally fascinating!
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Our Autumn View from the Main House (Last Year)
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Answer to the cheese board question above: The Vermont Country Store.
Thank you for reading our newsletter!
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