Holy Haus - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Holy Haus

Fish Report recently posted several commercial properties for sale in Russia, including Buschur’s Market and Cruizers, both long time establishments in town. We always bring back sausage and other meats from Buschur’s whenever we visit as the sausage is the closest we’ve found to the original Ft. Loramie Busse’s sausage that I grew up enjoying. Check out this past blog about Busse’s. And my brother used to own Cruizers which we also patronized during our visits. If I recall, he bought Apt C from Ron Voisard and renamed it.

Here’s hoping both sales are successful and the new owners continue to provide fine service to the community. While browsing the commercial property link, also listed for sale was the old Minster high school building pictured below, where I had played basketball during high school and afterwards as part of the Minster Knights of Columbus team in the competitive Tri-County league.

The more surprising aspect of this listing was that my two nieces, April & Heather, rent space in the old high school (blue circle above) for their preschool called Holy Haus.

The Christian preschool just opened earlier this fall as shown in the photo below. They already have a waiting list for the next two years! Offering both morning and afternoon classes, their teaching focuses on the whole child - spiritually and mentally.

The old high school used to house Minster's kindergarten and as pictured below, my nieces have dramatically transformed the space into a kid friendly environment with lots of natural light and a non-traditional classroom setting.

And of course, April and Heather share their local German heritage with the kids as evidenced by the Octoberfest photo below.

The kids are also being taught about charity by organizing a toy drive for needy children through Rustic Hope in Russia. Here’s the flyer.

Regardless of the potential sale of the old high school, my nieces have already reached out to two other alternative places in town, but they really hope any new owner will continue to rent out the current space to them. To quote the pair, “God has a plan for Holy Haus and it will work itself out.” Praying that it does!

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Puttypalooza - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Puttypalooza

When it was announced Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter, I rejoined the social media giant after cancelling my membership several years ago in protest of Twitter’s policies. I was glad to rejoin and quickly started following several of my old favorites, including of course Fish Report and also “@Puttypalloza”, the handle of a Ft. Loramie resident name Mike “MD” Puthoff. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him, but we’ve talked on the phone plus he follows me and I follow him on Twitter. I attended high school with his dad, Don, who unfortunately lost his life in a farming accident in 1999..

Mike lives on this picturesque setting southeast of Ft. Loramie shown above where he and his wife and 4 growing sons are "living the dream”. Mike was a huge fan of my MLB-playing cousin, Jared Hoying, and he would post highlights each morning of Jared’s game the day before and also any articles about Jared.

Unfortunately, Jared has retired from baseball, but Mike’s posts about farming are amazing, especially in stark contrast to the memories of my Dad’s farming exploits during my younger days. Mike works at Clopay, but during harvest season helps his cousin Jeff Puthoff and wife Becky, owners of Laneview Farms with over 1000 acres including the home place in Ft. Loramie, and acreage in Newport, Versailles, Oran, etc. Jeff and Becky also have a twitter handle for their farms as shown here:

Their farm equipment is extensive, highlighted by the most recent acquisition nicknamed “Black Betty” a gigantic grain cart pictured below. What a monster, as it holds 1500 bushels and weighs in at 24,000 pounds when fully loaded. Twitter video posts of Black Betty have this memorable background song.

Another unique piece of equipment is Mike's drone, providing all kinds of aerial footage. Mike is a weather junkie, like most farmers, as was my dad. he's always posting sun rises and sun sets, as well as analyzing weather patterns and cloud formations. Notice the aerial photo of the pond in front of his home; how meticulously the lawn is cut like the grass in the outfield of a baseball field. In fact, next to the red barn behind the house, notice the baseball field, football goal post and soccer goal that doubles as a golf ball hitting net as well; perfect for his 4 young boys!

Dad also maintained a tidy farm as evidenced by this aerial photo. We also had a baseball field with the red monster barn in right field! Our woods, just beyond the farm buildings, represented the perfect place to roam and explore during all four seasons of the year. No doubt Mike’s 4 boys enjoy the woods as much as I did as a kid.

Like Mike, Dad also always paid close attention to the weather and was really good at knowing exactly when to cut hay, as it took a couple days of good weather for the hay to dry before baling. He trusted weather forecasts originating from Ft. Wayne radio station WOWO, 1190 on the AM dial. Here’s the makeshift chart WOWO used to forecast the weather!

Dad’s farming all came in 10 acre bunches, as that the acreage most farm equipment in those days could handle in a day. As pictured here, corn planters were two rows. I loved sitting in the planter seat following along behind the tractor. That seat meant the planter was originally horse drawn. Jeff has a 16 row planter, so he can plant over 80 acres in one day, or more if going under moonlight as the following photo implies!

Notice the old wagon next to our planter? We had one just like it, but with rubber tires, which also had been converted from being horse drawn. And check the huge tractor trailer outfit Laneview Farms uses to transport the grain for storage. Quite a contrast!

Once the planted corn starts growing, an airplane is used to treat the weeds, while my dad dealt with them by sending me into the field with a hoe!

Harvest time on our farm back in the 50’s meant combining wheat and oats by taking about a 5” swath, compared to Laneview Farms self propelled monster that can cut about 40’ in one pass.

Ditto for corn picking, with MD harvesting 8 rows in each pass compared to one row for Dad.

Here’s my favorite tweet from Mike. Dad also loved those old hickory trees in our woods. We have two in our yard that I admire as well.

Ditto on that spot-on shagbark hickory logic for me and my Dad.

Follow me on twitter @dhboerger

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50 Year Bottle of Wine - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

50 Year Bottle of Wine

About 35 years ago, I was visiting a local wine shop and ran across a bottle of wine with the vintage of 1972, the same year we were married, so I bought the bottle as a keepsake, storing it in our wine rack ever since. The wine was produced by the Beaulieu Vineyards in Napa Valley, California. If I recall the price was $35 even though the bottle has an old price tag of $74.95, pretty expensive for a wine back then, but it was the right year so I made the purchase.

As shared in a recent blogpost, my wife Debby and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. To commemorate the milestone, we along with our son Reggie spent a wonderful week in the Rockies trekking around the Grand Teton Mountains and visiting Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Some photos follow.

Rather than taking the chance of a leaky or broken bottle, we chose not to pack the old wine in our suitcase and instead opened it upon our return. After 50 years, the cork had somewhat disintegrated so the only way to open the bottle was to push in the cork. To filter out the fragments and settlings, we strained the wine through a piece of cheese cloth.

We used two different wine glasses with a history, one of which we “borrowed” from a wonderful restaurant in Paris called Chez Francis we ran across just off the Chance Elyse on our last night in the City of Lights celebrating our 30th anniversary. The other was a wine glass engraved with Dad we chose when dividing up items before selling my in-laws home.

Debby took the first sip of the 50 year old wine and nearly spit it out. She described it as sour and tart. So we tried it with some food after letting the old wine air out for a while and it became tolerable, at least to me!

I finished Debby’s glass after polishing off mine, gaining a nostalgic taste for the aged wine. I did notice a little hangover-type headache the next morning, most likely from the high level of sulphates in wine of that vintage. At least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! We used another cork to plug the bottle until we are inclined to try another sip at some point! When empty, the bottle will take a prime spot on our bar, cork inside and all.

To celebrate our 40th anniversary in 2012, we travelled to Napa Valley in California. We enjoyed a hot air balloon ride over the wine country and also a trip on the wine train through the valley, including an opportunity for a taste testing of the current vintage of the Beaulieu wine. The vineyard has quite a history going back over a century, founded by Goerges de Latour, who was the first to bring grapevines from France for planting on the slopes of Napa Valley with perfect weather cooled by the gentle winds of the Pacific.

When noticing this quote inscribed on a beam in the vineyard's tasting room, we knew our 1972 vintage was a good choice and vowed to open the bottle to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary:

“I’d wager that there are so many Napa Cabernets made today that if you stacked them one by one, they’d reach all the way to the moon. But if you stacked them in order of historical significance with the most profound bottles forming the base, the number one bottle would have to be Beaulieu Vineyard’s legendary Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.”

- Jonathan Cristaldi, Food & Wine magazine

Today’s vintages continue to be outstanding as evidenced by the 100 point rating and a steep price on their 2019 vintage cabernet reserve as shown below.

So you might ask what we'll do to celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary? You can bet wine will be involved!

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