Berries

A kind friend sent along a tip for preventing berries from getting moldy. 

"When you get your berries home, prepare a mixture of one part vinegar (white or apple cider probably work best) and ten parts water.  Dump the berries into the mixture and swirl around. Drain, rinse if you want (though the mixture is so diluted you can't taste the vinegar,) and pop in the fridge.  The vinegar kills any mold spores and other bacteria that might be on the surface of the fruit, and voila!  Raspberries will last a week or more, and strawberries go almost two weeks without getting moldy and soft."

Berries going moldy is not a problem in this house, but just because they get eaten so quickly. And the sweet cherries are fantastic so far this year!

Lens of Unionville

A few weeks ago a friend of mine's rambunctious horse managed to knock her eyeglasses askew, and yesterday she went up to Exton to get them fixed.
"How did this happen?" asked the repair guy, inspecting the crooked spectacles.
"My horse knocked them off," she explained matter-of-factly.
But because it was Exton and not Unionville, the repair guy found this to be a highly unusual response.
"He looked at me like I was one of the Flying Wallendas!" said my friend.
Yes, it's a different world only a few miles outside of U-ville. I was in Lionville the other evening, eating ice cream at Milky Way Farms, and people were staring and pointing at the herd of Holsteins on the farm like it was odd to actually see cattle up close and personal. (By the way: the mint chocolate chip ice cream is really good there. And my fellow dessert-eater, who introduced me to this place, had a root beer float with chocolate ice cream and loved every bit of it.)

Birds and Bees

I had a fine morning on Saturday, sitting out in the bright, hot sunshine in the middle of a pasture. No, I haven't embraced the contemplative life: I was volunteering as a fence judge for the cross-country portion of this weekend's horse trials at Plantation Field, off Route 82.
As well as the contestants and their beautiful horses, the birds were out in force, singing away merrily: a few red-winged blackbirds were in an unmown area near my folding chair, and a kingbird perched on the number pole of my jump. Tiny bee-like insects hovered around me and landed on my clipboard, water bottle and walkie-talkie.
One sad note, though: the longtime communications manager/announcer for the competition, Richard Thompson, died this past week, and he was missed. He was the one who was always in charge of the walkie-talkies, and had he been there on Saturday, there would have been absolutely no confusion about which channel we were supposed to be using, 1 or 2.
(I also want to mention the passing of Paul Rowland, a horse trainer, paramedic and family man. Paul died June 8 of mesothelioma, which he had been battling tenaciously since 2010. He was well known and beloved in the local horse community and was able to attend the Willowdale races back on May 13. The members of the Montgomery County Second Alarmer’s Rescue Squad, where he worked, are wearing black bands over their badges in his memory.)

All the news

There was a rare bright spot on the journalism front last week: investor Warren Buffett, owner of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., purchased a few dozen daily newspapers, saying he is bullish on local journalism.
"I believe newspapers that intensively cover their communities will have a good future. It's your job to make your paper indispensable to anyone who cares about what is going on in your city or town," he wrote in a letter to the newspapers' staffers. "No one has ever stopped reading halfway through a story that was about them or their neighbors."
I agree wholeheartedly (this should come as no surprise to anyone). I have worked at small papers and large papers, and I've come to believe strongly in the value and potential of community journalism, where reporters know who and what they are writing about.

Just stop

A neighbor told me that the other day she saw a driver running the stop sign on northbound Newark Road at Route 842 in West Marlborough -- and not just rolling through, but not even braking one bit. Another woman who lives in London Grove village said motorists regularly ignore the stop signs there, too.
A reminder of what can happen when you blow through a stop sign: a few weeks ago, two Lancaster County brothers ran the stop sign on Street Road at Route 472 in Lower Oxford. Their car was hit by a milk truck and they were killed instantly. I passed the site the other day, and there's a memorial, with flowers and a portrait of both of the young men.

Where did you park?

Could we finally see a resolution to the Whip's parking problems?
The Springdell tavern has become hugely popular, but because of its small parking lot, latecomers are forced to choose between double-parking (you can leave your car keys with the staff), risking a ticket by parking along the roadside or on the grass across the street -- or turning around and going back home.
The West Marlborough supervisors are considering a zoning amendment that would allow parking to be located on a separate lot from the principal use in the township's Village-Residential zones (Springdell and London Grove village). The logic, according to the proposed amendment, is that many of the lots in the zone "do not meet the minimum lot area requirement thereby resulting in principal uses on lots that do not have adequate space for the use." (That would certainly seem to be the case here.)
The parking lot has to be within 150 feet of the main property, 500 feet if there's "a continuous off-street path, sidewalk or accessway that directly connects with the principal use."
Allowing parking on a separate lot "will allow for these principal uses and any nonconforming uses to exist and operate in a manner that reduces traffic congestion and safety concerns related to the parking of vehicles along the street."
The ordinance includes regulations on the off-site uses in terms of size, lighting and signage.
The proposed amendment will be reviewed by both the township planning commission and the Chester County planning commission, and a public hearing will be held Monday, July 30.

Stressed out

Usually the customers at my favorite garden center are friendly and happy, but that certainly wasn't the case on Tuesday.
One woman was there with two men -- one was her husband, and the other worked for them, I'm guessing as a farm manager. They had a giant "dualie" extended-cab pickup, the kind with a little step when you lower the tailgate, and the bed was packed full of plants, including about a dozen giant papyrus plants. The woman wanted to go back and get more, over her husband's objections ("We've already been here an hour!"), and it took some doing for the men to convince her that there was no way anything else could fit in the truck. She finally conceded, but with poor grace.
And two women in a Volvo with Delaware tags were quarreling peevishly about how to arrange their purchases in the trunk.
"It's dirty," objected one, looking at a pot with disdain.
The outcome wasn't a happy one: I saw them leaving the parking lot with a squished plant stalk sticking out of the trunk lid.

Mowing

In his monthly roadmaster's report at the June 5 township meeting, Supervisor Hugh Lofting said the road crew was busy mowing the township's roadsides. (I see them at work, often.)
"We've gotten several compliments about their work," he said. "Everything seems to be running -- for a change."

Crime report

Even state troopers can be crime victims.
Trooper Dwayne Winchester of the Avondale barracks stopped by the West Marlborough Township supervisors' meeting on June 5 to report on state police activity in the township so far in 2012. In response to a question about burglaries, he mentioned that his own house, on Route 82 in East Marlborough, was broken into last August.
The officer said he came home from his work shift to find a woman running out the back door of his house and arrested her on the spot. Her boyfriend had been sitting in his car in a neighbor's driveway acting as lookout and phoned her when the officer arrived home, prompting her to try to flee.
He said he was relieved to find that his house had been targeted randomly; the burglar was a heroin addict looking for valuables to steal and sell, not someone he had previously arrested who was out for revenge. In fact, he said, he imagined the burglar was not at all happy to see his police uniforms hanging up in the house.
He said the presence of his dog did not deter the burglar.
The trooper said the state police were called out to 92 incidents in the township so far this year, including 3 house burglaries, 18 crashes (4 of them DUI-related), 9 criminal investigations and 4 DUIs.
"Pretty quiet," he summarized.
He advised residents to call the police if they are planning to leave for an extended period so the police can keep an eye on the house. Also, he advised residents to report anything suspicious and "look out for each other."

Out in the open

Usually when I'm talking to people who want to appear in this column, they are on their best behavior, careful not to put a foot wrong.
Not so much a plainspoken man I met this weekend.
When I introduced myself he peered at me and asked suspiciously, "You're not a [Republocrat], are you?"
I replied that I most certainly was NOT a [Republocrat], and he expressed his relief.
His daughter, who was standing next to him, was mortified, but I was vastly amused.

Check, please!

Just came home from a very nice family dinner at the Iron Hill Brewery in downtown West Chester. We went out to celebrate the wonderful performance of two of the Tally-ho men -- my brother and the Young Relative -- in the Hillendale Husky Hustle 5K run on Saturday.
The weird thing is, my brother, who was supposedly an honoree, grabbed the dinner check from our father, the traditional bill-payer, and would not hear of anyone else chipping in.
"You realize what this means," I warned him. "There will be items about you in this column ALL SUMMER LONG, exhorting you to win more races so that you buy me more dinners."

Art show

On Sunday afternoon I stopped by a charming art show at the Willowdale Art Academy, a children's art studio located above the Landhope Farms store at Routes 82 and 926 (but no, NOT in Tony Young's old office space). Karen D'Allaird said she opened the studio at the beginning of this past school year, and after a summer break (there's no air conditioning, and apparently the loft space gets very warm) lessons will start up again in September. She offers classes for children in first through eighth grades. You can see Karen's own work at www.chestercountyartgallery.com, and the school has a website under its own name as well.

Born in the USA

Two friends of mine visited the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall in Philadelphia last Tuesday and had a wonderful time. They said the exhibits are so well done and engaging that they will appeal to children and grown-ups. They brought me back a folded-up copy of the Constitution, which came in handy that very day when some friends were quarreling online about the effectiveness of the Fifth Amendment (yes, I know a lot of lawyers, and a lot of argumentative people in general). I was glad to see that I still remember every word of the Preamble, which we had to learn by heart in the eighth grade.
My friends also enjoyed the Bruce Springsteen exhibit at the museum, which runs through Sept. 3: "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen." My friend told the tour guide to keep an eye out for Bruce himself during Devon week, because he's always in town to watch his daughter Jessica compete at the horse show.

Into town

Thank you, Richard Carlin of Unionville! Mr. Carlin, who used to fox hunt with Cheshire, liked my item about a friend who felt provincial for telling guests she was "going into town" to run errands. He recalled that many years ago W. Plunkett Stewart (who founded Mr. Stewart's Cheshire Foxhounds in 1912) used to say exactly the same thing when discussing his plans for non-hunting days.