House Tour Success! 12/06/09

We had a lovely successful Bed and Breakfast House Tour to benefit Project SHARE, an organization that provides food and clothing to Cumberland Valley families. Over 125 people crossed our threshold and got to taste the wonderful cakes donated by Tami and The Fancy Cake Shoppe in downtown Carlisle as well as tour the entire house and get a peek at what an Innkeepers life is like? Our top question of the day? "What made you decide to become an Innkeeper?" Meeting great people like all the ones we met today. It was my first turn as a committee chair for our Cumberland Valley Bed and Breakfast Association and I had some wonderful support from Tracie, my good friend and innkeeper at Blair Mountain www.blairmtn.com and Mary at Carlisle House, www.thecarlislehouse.com. We raised $1820.00 for SHARE which actually results in the ability to purchase about $29,000! groceries from the Central PA Food Bank. Warms my heart. This is what this season is all about isn't it? Dee Fegan, President of the cumberland Valley Bed and Breakfast Association and Innkeeper of the Fabulous Pheasant Field Bed and Breakfast are shown here presenting the big check.

Best Wishes for a wonderful holiday season.

Family Reunion and House Tour!

What a wonderful weekend this has been. Today we celebrated Joe Keller's Birthday here at the farm with his family. Joe and his wife Mary Jane owned Fallen Tree Farm, then Kellerhaus, for 20 years and were instrumental in the beginnings of the bed and breakfast movement in Carlisle and charter members of the Cumberland Valley Bed and Breakfast Association. We regret so much that Joe passed away late last winter. It was wonderful having his family stay with us and reminisce about the farm. We certainly feel blessed to have found the farm and hope we carried it on in a tradition they would approve of.

Just a little over a month until the first annual Cumberland Valley Bed and Breakfast Holiday House Tour to benefit Project Share. Sunday December 6 from 1-5pm, 9 of our historic B&B's will open their door to the public. Come see the homes dressed in their holiday finest. Some wonderful local musicians and caterers are scheduled to appear at the B&B's. Come out and support a great cause and take a step back in time. Any guest staying at Fallen Tree Farm that weekend will receive two complimentary tickets to the house tour as part of the stay.

Best friend of Man's Best Friend

Wedding season has come to a close. We wish the four wonderful couples who were married here this season all the best and hope they will take time to celebrate their anniversaries with us in the coming years:
Congrats to Windy and Jason, Richelle and Josh, Rebecca and Mark and Kim and Etzer.
We had a really fun and interesting guest stay with us last week. Don Abney of
Abney Catahoulas was here for a week of canine tracker training with York County Dog Training Club. Don has literally written the book on canine tracker training "The Canine Tracking Guide". While staying with us he broke Sully of his sometime overly effusive greeting habit. Sully now manages to greet us and our guests in a nice pleasant "sit". We really enjoyed Don's stories with regards to his dogs. We( Sully, Sebastien and all us humans) were sad to see him head back to Louisianna. For more information on the amazing Catahoulas check out Don's website www.donabney.com

Don was kind enough to pose for a photo with his newest trainee and fan, Sullivan.

Wedding Success!

And here ends the tale of how the "Ruins" became the site for weddings at Fallen Tree Farm. After weeks of landscaping, brick and stone work, Richelle Hauck and Josh Dourte became Mr. and Mrs. Dourte on Saturday Sept 12, 2009. The wedding was lovely, the bride was beautiful, the groom handsome, the innkeepers tired! But they all lived happily ever after.

We had a fabulous staff of family and friends to help us park cars in our field which suffered from the previous day's downpour. The food was wonderful and all the associated vendors that came along with the wedding were great to work with. My only regret....We were too busy to take many pictures but we did get a few which I will attach here.

Thanks to all of our guests this year that have checked in repeatedly to encourage us and remind us to get some sleep!

Ruins no longer in ruins

WE'RE DONE!!!! We put the last brick on the last pillar this evening at 7pm and then turned around and took a look at the finished product...and we are pleased. Six weeks straight of laying a brick aisle way, building stone walls and raised flower beds, building and erecting pergolas and spreading stonedust and we are so happy its over! The entire project really started at the beginning of the summer with removing all the stuff that was in the area to begin with, but the last six weeks was where the real work began. We are seriously taking a break from "projects" for at least a week.
I'm posting a couple of pics of the finished project and one in which I am standing in the exact place where the brick pillars are now, which I took on the very first day we looked at the property to purchase, Sept 29, 2006. Wow, hard to believe its been just under three years since we found this place, courtesy of the B&B assocation. A special thanks to Brent's parents who showed up every day for the last six weeks to be our "work" crew. We couldn't have asked for a better crew or better parents.

Now-Bring on the wedding bells....

Ruins Update

As many of our guests have discovered upon visiting the B&B, most of our summer has been taken up with converting our 150 yr old bank barn ruins into a place where marriages begin and parties are held. We have been doing about 98% of the work ourselves with a few outside helpers . All of it has been done by hand with the exception of our little tractor as we discovered quickly that large machinery vibrates the walls down! Its coming along. This past week we finished the aisleway and the step up to the platform for the wedding party and started work on the brick columns that frame the two entrances. We've all become masons including Eva, who is getting great at mixing mortar as you can see from the pictures. Its certainly a labor of love for love. Each of the couples who are being married here this fall is unique and fun. We can't wait to be part of their big day. What amazes us most is that they managed to look at the ruins last year when it was covered in thirty years worth of moss and detritis and see the same potential we did! Those three couples will truly be part of history, both the farm's and ours as we enter our fall season with wedding bells ringing.

Everything Aches!

Hello treasured guests and friends! We are about 4 weeks out from our first wedding to be held in the ruins, and we are working at a feverish pace to complete the project while still attempting to take good care of the guests. Thank goodness for family who are practically raising our two girls, Maddy 6 and Eva, 4 as we endeavor to finish this project. While I complain about how much my back aches, Brent keeps mentioning how we will have "nothing" to do next summer, all projects will be complete... I haven't mentioned about the flagstone patio and breezeway I'd like to put on the barn and laying a brick patio where the current pea gravel area is... probably best to keep those ideas to myself for now. The good news... the ruins are really coming along. I am attaching a few photos.... The original floor was a mixure of dirt and concrete. We are laying flagstone excavated on the property during the ring project in the "pit" area . Next comes the brick runner up to the pergola area. The rest of the concrete will be level out with stone dust and packed down. Eventually we might decide to flagstone all out of but it will mean demolition of the existing concrete. You can see by the photos I have built my own walls(like a very heavy jigsaw puzzle to house raised flower beds). Next up is installing the arched trellis' over two of the entrances and building the brick columns for the main entranceway. We are installing some lanterns in the corners as well for some ambient lighting. Its going to be great... Hope everyone is staying dry( all it does is rain here.)

Some other Fallen Tree News. We partnered with Ski Roundtop for the ski season this year. Keep us in mind for snowmaking weather. We'll be doing some ski and stay packages as well as offering discount lift tickets. Also, I am heading a committee to organize a Bed and Breakfast Christmas House Tour featuring the B&B's of the Cumberland Valley Bed and Breakfast Association. We are partnering with The Cumberland Valley Visitor's Bureau and Project Share on this endeavor. I really think it is going to be a wonderful opportunity to raise money for some of our fiscally challenged local families while giving local patrons a sneak peak at the B&B's in our area. Don't forget us as a lodging choice for your loved ones when they visit the area to spend time with you. Let us keep your home from being overcrowded so you can concentrate on the important parts... reminiscing and food! Look for more info to come regarding the tour, scheduled tenatively for Sunday December 6, 2009.

Its really been a great year for us so far. While the economy has presented its challenges, we were very fortunate to see a strong growth trend from our first year to our second. I believe the new saying is " Even is the new Up!" In that case, thanks to all of you, we are doing better than expected. We have had many repeat visitors from 08 and several who we've had the priviledge of hosting multiple times in 09. We are blessed you have found us and continue to revisit us.

Have a great end of summer...

Kim