It’s a good kind of problem for farmers to have: After an unexpectedly seasonable winter and growing season, the Champaign Berry Farm in Urbana produced an unexpected bumper crop of one of its mainstays this year.
“We saved a certain section of the orchard for the gleaners,” she says. “I told the [professional] pickers not to pick those peaches. We like to give back to the community and to those in need. That’s one of our purposes in life.”
On just about any night of the week, though certainly on almost every Friday and Saturday, there’s bound to be a square dance happening somewhere in Ohio.
The Crows got into square dancing by chance. They went to dinner late one summer evening to a restaurant where many of the other patrons were wearing what they later learned to be traditional square-dancing attire: the women in ruffled skirts worn over fluffy crinolines, and men in western-style shirts that matched or complemented their partners’ outfits.
According to the Ohio Craft Brewers Association, there were 434 craft breweries in the state of Ohio at the end of 2023. More are opening all the time.
Hops add bitterness to balance the sweetness of malt in beers. Different varieties of hops contain varying levels of oils and acids, and those are what give beers their distinct flavors.
The popularity of pickleball in Ohio, like seemingly everywhere else, is increasing rapidly, with more and more courts popping up all the time.
Volkens discovered pickleball when he began to spend winters in Arizona. He fell in love with the sport and played daily. But when he returned to Middletown he was dismayed to find nary a court — not a single one.
After driving around Middletown and finding 17 empty tennis courts, Volkens saw his opportunity; he gathered some friends and made a case to Middletown’s Parks Department, which agreed to dedicate space to the activity, and Volkens started recruiting Middletown residents old and young as soon as courts became available. That was nearly 20 years ago.
When spring’s first warm breezes blow over Ohio’s landscapes, there are plenty of folks — children and adults alike — who think, “It’s a great day to fly a kite!”
The group’s name is a clever allusion to Cincinnati’s history as well as the group’s reason for existence. “Cincinnati used to be the pork-processing capital of the U.S.,” says longtime member John Graves of Fairfield, a retired registered nurse, who also explains that “P.I.G.S. Aloft” stands for “People Interested in Getting Stuff Aloft.”
“We don’t collect dues or elect officers,” Graves says. “We just get together to fly our kites and have fun. Anyone is welcome to join us.”
Jody Davis got his first electric train for Christmas when he was 8 years old. But his love affair with trains started even earlier.
Davis joined Associated Model Railroad Engineers of Coshocton when he was 14, and currently, at 55, serves as president.
It’s a familiar story with model railroaders: A childhood fascination with trains leads to a Christmas or birthday gift of a model train set. Retired music educator Bruce Knapp, 81, of North Bend, is still an active participant and member of the National Model Railroad Association’s Cincinnati chapter.
Jackie Driscoll paints her landscape with a palette of colors from native plants.
Driscoll has been gardening since she was a child. Her mother, who kept gardening until she died at 88, planted the joy of gardening seed in her daughter, and it still flourishes.
Jackie and her husband, Brian, lived in a Cleveland suburb while their children were growing up. Their property was small, but Driscoll kept adding plants to it. “My husband finally said, ‘You have to leave some grass,’” she recalls.
When young Gary Stretar wasn’t playing sports, he was busy drawing something. He didn’t grow up to become an athlete, but two childhood influences cemented that second pastime into a rewarding career.
The first was his teacher in both fifth and sixth grades, Miss Paul. Stretar says he didn’t learn much more in college art classes than what Miss Paul had already taught him. “Teachers don’t always challenge kids to learn more, but she did,” he says. “She wasn’t afraid to teach us [advanced art techniques of] perspective, line, color values. A lot of us in her classes went on to art careers.”
Whether they’re furnishing realistic-looking rooms in a dollhouse or creating a unique tiny display, for folks who collect and create miniatures, it truly is a small, small world.
Some miniaturists buy completely finished items when they want to furnish a dollhouse or display. Other collectors buy furniture and other items from kits so that they have the fun of doing the craft and painting it however they wish.
The dollhouses that miniaturists enjoy furnishing are very different from dollhouses made for children. They are smaller and constructed to exact scale, and the furniture and other decorative items placed inside are too small and too expensive for children to play with.
