Episode 44 - Liz Betemps - Williamsburg Garden Club

We've been living in since so long.

All

Welcome to episode 44

of Let's Talk Clermont.

I am your host, Patrick, and thank you very much for tuning in. I'm I'm happy you're here. I'm happy you're listening, And I wanna wish everybody a Merry Christmas. I hope you're able to tune in and listen to Santa last week, which

I thought was a great interview in it. Excuse me. It got me in the Christmas spirit. We're a week away from Christmas, and I hope you're having a great holiday season. Hope you got all your holiday shopping done, and I hope everybody was safe during that snow and cold. Man, it got really cold.

Then I almost ran off the road on 02/22. I was able to recover myself, but, man, it was a those roads were pretty

nasty.

So I hope everybody was safe. And I hope you're able to get out and enjoy the snow. And it wasn't too much of an annoyance. I know having little kids, I was able to get out there and throw some snowballs at them and do a bunch of fun

dad stuff in the snow. So

overall, I just hope you're doing great. And again, thank you for tuning in.

If you're new, here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about a little bit of news, then we'll get into our interview for today. And then we will wrap it all up with some events around the county. So let's jump right in. We're gonna start with Clermont as a whole.

There are some more annexation developments.

If you remember from episode 42,

there is a new tract of land that is going to be annexed into the village of Batavia,

from the township. So the village is going to take some of the township and annex it into its,

I guess, its village.

It's about 30 acres in the Taylor Road area. And again, if you recall,

that piece of land is in the Claremont County Airport's RPZ or runway protection zone,

which is in place to keep everyone safe

in case an airplane can't quite make the runway. So it's kind of a big chunk of land that's

open. So if an airplane either has problems taking off or landing, it can kind of go into that open space and not

run into any buildings or anything like that.

So this is a type two annexation,

which means as long as all the criteria are met, the commissioners have to approve it within a certain time frame. Now last meeting, which I believe was on December 1, the commissioners decided to table the vote until the meeting this week where they had to because of that timeframe.

I think they had till the fifth the fifteenth? Yes. The December

15.

So

they had to vote on it.

But

there were some interesting public comments.

Chuck Gallagher, the airport manager came up and he kind of reiterated the safety hazard

of developing in the RPZ.

And he asked

the commissioners if they could delay it or do it with you know, approve it with conditions or something like that. But he mainly just reiterated the safety hazards of developing in the RPZ.

The other public comment was from Brian

Onestrutt,

which I believe I'm pronouncing that right.

And he had a kind of an interesting proposal.

And I clipped it, so we'll just take a listen.

So what I'm presenting

or

almost challenging

the village,

the commissioners, the townships, and the schools come together

and come up with an agreement something like Columbus that says, alright.

Village, no more type two annexations

of township property.

None. You can do type ones.

Still not gonna like it, at least I won't personally,

but you it has to be a type one. The public's voice has to be

listened to and and considered in these decisions. So

I don't know, commissioner Painter, if that would be you to try to

pressure the other entities to come together. Not really pressure, but get you guys together and discuss it. Like, what do we need to do to make this happen?

See see if we can come together as a group and said, listen, this is what we need. You'll have the school board there, the township, the village, you guys. What all do we need? Just don't do any more type twos. And there's a reason why they don't want type twos in Columbus because

for lack of better term, it's just not fair. They have the competitive advantage with type two. You are removing the voices

of everyone in the communities in the in the county that are on yeah. In the county that that don't want it. So

I can give you a copy of this thing here. There's, of course, a bunch of legalese in here that I don't necessarily understand, but the the paragraph first paragraph kind of explains it. Pretty cut and dried. Just no more type two annexations,

but

I think

that's all I had down here. And I Okay. Appreciate the time and Well, thank you.

Thanks for coming in today. Sure. So

alright. So that was excuse me.

That was Brian One Stratt.

And what he was saying is it sounds like up in Columbus that the city of Columbus and a few townships

entered into an agreement

where they would not do any more type two annexations. They would only do type one, which if you'll

remember from all the annexation talks we've been talking about,

there is a step in type one annexations that allow the commissioners

to deny an annexation based on whether or not it's for the good of the county as a whole. So I thought that was interesting.

And we'll have to see if something like that happens. And I'm also gonna look a little bit more into maybe we can find somebody up in the Columbus area

to come on and talk about how they structured those deals.

I'm not sure I'll be able to find somebody, but I'll do my level best.

So I also wanted to play one more clip

of the actual vote. So the commissioners were very reluctant to pass this,

but as you'll hear and like we've talked about, their hands are pretty much tied. And you'll hear their objections to this,

and and why they're not particularly happy that they're passing it.

And so I would move to propose that the annexation be granted.

Do I have a second?

I will second. May I make a comment? Yeah. Absolutely.

I only second this because our hands are tied the way the law is written right now.

That's the way it has to be. If the law was different, you would not get a yes vote from me today. I absolutely oppose annexation.

I would say that we value the Claremont County Airport. You know that.

You know, our hands are tied when it comes to this manner. All we're doing is belaboring

exactly what's going to happen if we will wait till next Wednesday.

You know? So

I I too would would have a different I have lobbied for this particular thing, and you are aware of that, you know, at the State House and have actually made my presence known there. You know? So I understand that annexations were put in place many, many years ago when everybody lived in a village,

and that was because unincorporated

area was needed to be able to advance the village and make it larger and allow more people to live there. That's not how people live today.

You know, today, our two largest land areas,

when it comes to townships are Union and Miami,

and, 50,000 residents live in those two areas.

So, you know, we have small villages. However, small villages have home rule home home,

home rule, and they get the advantage of being able to attach,

unincorporated areas throughout.

And, when I say that the legislation needs to address that, that's exactly where it has to be addressed.

Not only have counties

lobbied for that,

so have school systems.

And school systems would like to have the ability to be able to,

approve annexations,

which which they don't get to do that. So, that's exactly where we are. Any other comments?

Roll

call. Commissioner Painter? Yes. Commissioner Bachelor?

Yes. Commissioner Corcoran?

I know that my vote mean no means nothing, but I'm voting no. I think that people

spoke,

and

I think it's sad.

Again, I can add. Yeah. I only voted yes because I have my hands are tied. I have no other choice.

That We have legal counsel and our legal counsel has spoken. You know, we have documentation

that says these seven criteria have been met, not only by legal counsel but also by our own staff who have done the review on each of those seven counts. So And even even so, I still think that we're asking for future problems.

And and not just a a big carrier plane going down, but we have a flight school there also.

And two students just landed a plane on a Toyota. What was it? Yesterday?

You know?

I I don't know.

Thank you. A no vote for me will be ceremonial

at best. You know? And That's alright. That's kinda how how it works. So there's there's no comment at this time. That's okay. I stand by it. Yeah. Roll call.

Commissioner Painter?

Yes. Commissioner Bachelor? Yes. Commissioner Corcoran? Yeah. So

there you have it. You heard some of their objections to it. You heard commissioner Painter talking about, you know, kinda how this works and and why it was in place. So that annexation will go through, and that little patch of land is now gonna be in the village.

It is interesting to note, though, that the village council,

Batavia village council,

is gonna have a big shake up after the first of the year when Lori Zager, Mike Gardner, Tom Smith,

and Randy Dorsey all get sworn in. And based on the interview, which you can go back and listen to when they were candidates running for village council,

this seems like something they would be against. So we're definitely gonna keep our eye on this, and I have a feeling

that all of this annexation zoning stuff, is is not gonna go anywhere anytime soon. So we're gonna keep tabs on it.

Moving on, let's look at Union Township. They had a special meeting on the fifteenth

to talk about levying a $5

license tax to fund road improvements.

They framed it as a user fee that could stabilize the pavement program as resurfacing costs

rise and township reserves are starting to get tapped out. I thought that user fee

language was interesting. Don't

live in Union Township, but I don't know, that doesn't sit right with me. Anyway,

it is estimated that the tax would bring in between 2,275,000

and $280,000

per year.

And they said that the money would only be used for road resurfacing

and related work. There weren't any speakers for or against this, but trustee John Becker

argued that $5 matters to some residents and

questioned why new money is actually needed.

When the vote came, though, Joe Dils and Michael Loge, I believe I'm pronouncing that correctly,

they both voted for it and Becker voted no. So it passed. So if you live in Union Township, you're gonna have yourself a $5

license tax in the near future.

Moving on to Milford Schools.

The district has a new superintendent.

They selected doctor Bobby Fiori or Fiori? Fiori. I think that's how you pronounce that. It looks Italian. I'm Italian. I should know how to pronounce that. Bobby Fiori as the district's next superintendent

pending board approval

at,

today's

board of education meeting.

Doctor Fiori

currently serves as assistant superintendent of curriculum

and special services for Beaver Creek City Schools,

overseeing curriculum, special education programming,

and major state and federal grant compliance.

She brings twenty plus years of experience across multiple

education roles. So get a new superintendent in Milford.

In the city of Milford, residents are gonna see an average of about $9 a month increase across water, sewer, and storm water and trash starting in 2026

following a city rate study.

The study found utility income wasn't keeping up with costs and the city plans a gradual five year rate adjustment

starting in 2026

with added funds aimed at infrastructure and rising

operating

costs.

So

your

utilities are going to be a little bit more expensive in Milford.

Okay, moving on to New Richmond schools.

So they have released a fiscal plan. If you remember, Richmond schools were placed on fiscal precaution by the state, which is the lowest of, I think,

kind of financial emergency states that the state can put a,

school district in.

And now this is mostly due from lost tax revenue from the Beck, Jordan, Zimmer coal plant closings.

Their main plan was to pass a levy to raise more money. That levy failed in November.

So they've got to come up with a new fiscal plan because they're not going to get any more money.

The new plan includes about 1,200,000

in cuts ahead of fiscal year twenty twenty seven,

and those cuts compound growing to about 1,460,000.00

in fiscal year twenty twenty eight.

Now some potential next steps if revenue isn't if new revenue isn't approved

include building realignment ideas, like moving eighth grade to the high school and even closing,

some elementary schools as part of a reconfiguration.

It also calls out planned actions like staffing reductions,

including multiple teaching positions via retirements and efficiencies

in an administrative position,

transportation

RAF,

student supported schedule shifts,

cuts to certain purchase services and mental health related roles,

and pay to play increasing to $300

per student,

per sport

with no family cap. So it sounds like kind of the the boat that Bethel, Bethel Tate's in. They have a really high pay to play as well.

So prior to this plan, the district was projecting

annual operating shortfalls growing from about 2,950,000.00

in fiscal year twenty twenty six to losses of 6,230,000.00

by fiscal year twenty twenty nine.

After they incorporate these plan items,

it's going to show fiscal year 2028

ending cash around

2,300,000.0

and fiscal year 2029

ending cash,

which would be in the whole 1,840,000.00.

So they would

be short 1,840,000.00

in fiscal year twenty twenty nine with the current plan.

So this plan really just buys time. It doesn't solve past 2029.

So it sounds like New Richmond schools are going to have

some

serious thinking to do.

Okay, that is all we've got for the news today. And we don't have any donations. No producers that donated to thank, which is always fine. But we are still running that holiday special now until January 1. There will be a half off donation special. And if you get it in by January 1, you can still take advantage of that. But after January 1, all goes back to normal. So the special is if you donate $25 and above, you will get a special mention,

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Alright. So I I was doing some thinking, and I think we're just gonna skip next Thursday's show. First and, frankly, foremost, it's Christmas. I don't I don't know why these shows keep landing on holidays. We had one on I guess we're always gonna have one on Thanksgiving, but

it's Christmas. And I'll be spending as much time with my family and loved ones as I possibly can. And I hope you are gonna do the same.

And since it's a big holiday, I really didn't wanna shortchange any of the guests that I've already interviewed.

We had an episode on Thanksgiving, and it did okay,

but not as well as the other episodes. And, you know, people take time out of their days to sit down and talk with us about what they're doing and how you can get involved with what they're doing and things like that. So

out of respect for our guests, I think Christmas day,

we'll just

let it be Christmas.

And we'll be back on New Year's Day. Like I said, it's weird. These are all falling on holidays.

Maybe it's a math. I don't know why.

But New Year's Day, I mean, quite frankly,

most people are just lounging around anyway. So it's not like Christmas where you've got family obligations and stuff like that. So we will be back January 1 with a brand new episode

of Let's Talk Claremont.

But today,

we are talking with Lizby Temps from the Williamsburg Garden Club.

And as you might expect, we talk a lot about gardening.

We also talk about the garden club in general, which is a lot bigger than I thought. It's kind it's more of a regional club, and they do a lot of interesting things, which you'll hear about in just a minute. So overall, I I think it was a great interview, and,

I hope you enjoy it.

Alright.

I'm just gonna start it like I start everything else. Why don't you just tell us who you are and and I guess all the things you do, and then we'll kinda get into it.

I'm Liz B. Temps.

I've been a Claremont County resident for over thirty years now.

I grew up in the Cincinnati area.

And

one of the things that brought me to Claremont County was a husband who wanted to farm.

And Are you guys farmers?

Not really. We're gentlemen farmers, if there's such a word.

But

when my daughter went off to college, my husband said, we're going. We're heading out looking for a farm.

So we spent every Saturday morning with a picnic basket, loaded the car with the dogs and the and the kids, and headed out to Claremont County. Mhmm. We knew we wanted to be on the East Side of town, so we were super excited when we came here.

No West Side for you? Well, we grew up on the East Side. So we kind of explored the West Side and decided that

we

were closer to our families if we stayed on the East Side.

So we purchased

15 acres of land. Nice.

And

it is

it's become a real passion.

There was not much there when we started, just a house. We've built a barn, a cabin in the woods,

a chicken coop,

a really large pond, about two acre pond. A two acre pond? That is a big pond. And Did you put fish in it? Do you stock it with fish? Just whatever happens to be there. Yeah. So we we have stocked from time to time, but I would hardly say that we're we do that effectively.

Yeah. But my husband had a degree in

agriculture

from Ohio State University and the and also from the University of Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan? Saskatchewan. He was in Canada. He was born a Canadian. Oh, wasn't he? Yeah. Came to The States,

and,

his family grew up here. But he would go every summer to his grandfather's farm, which was a huge

164

acre farm.

So his whole life, he'd wanted to farm.

I know nothing about farming. I'm

a city girl who

knew how to plant flowers in a flower box. That was about the

knowledge that I brought to our farming relationship.

So I knew when we got here that I was gonna have to learn a little bit more about managing things. And

for the longest time, I had a full time job, worked downtown,

had to do that really ugly commute, leaving 06:00 in the morning and coming home at 06:30 at night Yeah. And

barely knew my three neighbors on my street because I was never at home. Yeah.

But as

as things progressed,

I started my own business and was able to work from home. And at that point,

I thought, oh my gosh, I I live here in this county, and I know about three people. I really need to

expand

this a bit. Half the reason I did this podcast

is like I work from home and I don't know my neighbor. I was like, I don't know anybody in the county. So I'm like, I need to do something.

So my interest was gardening and I knew that the Williamsburg Garden Club was a really well established

organization.

This year, it celebrates its ninetieth anniversary.

Really? I didn't realize it's been around that long. Ninety years.

Wow. And it started as a group of

women that were interested in doing flowers for their church

for the services.

So they wanted to learn more collectively from each other about flowers and flower arranging.

So it began very simply.

And

one of the things I love is that at their meetings,

you were not allowed to serve refreshments.

If it was at your house, no refreshments.

Is Everything was supposed to be free,

focused, and just

focused on the motion of working with the flowers. Yeah. So it wasn't supposed to be really very social. It was supposed to be a real learning. So you weren't like no drinks or cookies or anything? No. It was we are here for flowers. Yes. Yes. That's that's pretty intense. I thought it was too.

And I can tell you that that is not the way it is today.

As a matter of fact, some of the women in the garden club, think should be in cooking clubs because they're amazing cooks.

But at any rate, it's

a very established and one of the largest garden clubs in Ohio,

which is what drew me to them. Mhmm. How many members do you guys have? We have over 50 members. Okay. I just And we have quite a few men that are members. Really? Gardeners are men and women, and some of the men in our club

have amazing

backgrounds and history. One of them is an arborist.

Another has done landscaping

as far reaching as for Disney World. Really? Yeah. Well, those guys are So you can learn professionals.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. I love Arbor. I've known a couple of arborists, and there's something about guys that really like trees.

I don't know. They're just cool people.

Exactly.

So the garden club grew from a few women focused on flowers for their church

into a much larger organization.

And we have won,

garden club of the year from our region, Region 4, which is all of Southwest Ohio,

for three years in a row. So the club continues to grow, do interesting things,

and

has become much broader than it was ninety years ago. Yeah.

So

can we talk about gardening a little bit? Of course.

When you first came in there and to today, what are some of the biggest things you've learned about gardening? Well,

all I've learned is that I really love it. And I keep learning and I'm continuously

learning more.

I recently joined the Ohio State University Master Gardener

volunteer program that's out of the Owensville

Fairgrounds. And

I continue to learn

science based

gardening, which

is beyond what I started with, which is just what do I like and what looks pretty and what can I get to grow here?

I feel like everybody has to start with what can I actually grow? Right.

What won't I kill?

At least that's how I start with planting. My wife's got a green thumb. I kill just about everything I try to grow. And my husband's not interested in anything unless you can eat it.

So flowers are definitely not his thing.

There have been a lot of experiences and a lot of things that have contributed

to the growth of the garden club.

One of the things that we do is a tremendous number

of field trips during the summer,

and we have been to some amazing places,

had amazing speakers that have shared with us their knowledge,

And the more we learn, the more we want to learn. We've

seen everything from

very specialized

manufacturing

almost of plants.

How do you mean manufacturing?

Well,

Rain's Garden

and Greenhouse,

they have equipment that picks up seedlings,

puts them into a

packet,

drops the soil into the packet, and then the packet of seedlings move on a conveyor down the conveyor belt and more come into

the So they've mechanized gardening. Mechanized gardening. That's insane. It was amazing to watch. Did come up with that themselves?

Oh, heavens, no. Okay. This is like a thing It's industry. For your If you're a professional gardener or garden grower,

if you're a grower, this is

a technique for doing that. Yeah. That's how many

does it go fast? I mean, is it like Very fast. Okay. So it's not like a little slow thing. It's just Oh, no. And

it's very interesting to watch the tiny

probe or fingers that pick up the seedlings Delicate,

especially with some seeds. Extremely

delicate, and then drop it into the soil

and then to watch the cells,

the individual cells be filled and then the plant move down the line.

So they they plant them, then do they have to have a person watch over them, or is No. That all mechanized

The watering, I imagine, is Oh, gosh. Is mechanized, but they have somebody going around and checking on them. Yes. Of course. Yeah. I guess you couldn't mechanize. Well, I don't know. With AI, maybe you could. It's gonna be robots doing it at some point.

But I never thought that was part of gardening until we visited.

RAINS provides the mums that we sell every year for our mum sale.

And it was very interesting because they were planting mums while we were there. So, we were able to see plants that we were gonna eventually

own and sell

be planted.

That's wild. I never thought about

mechanized gardening, but I mean, it's an industry. It's a huge industry. And if you need to

produce 10,000 mums, you're not gonna have some guy

planting 10,000 mums. That'd take forever.

That's wild.

Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on a mechanization tangent. That's fascinating.

We

also

have visited a lot of landscapers. We've learned a lot from Weimburg landscaping.

We've focused a lot on native plants. Mhmm. And

what we can do as even backyard gardeners in your own home

to improve

the environment.

We've had some incredible speakers

who've talked with us about

things that we can do ourselves in our own homes and in our own small spaces

that impact the whole world. So that's

a good thing to know. Yeah, I'd say. So what are some of the things that a backyard

gardener could do? Somebody who's not trying to plant 10,000 mums or something.

Yeah, one thing that all of us can do is try to get rid of invasive plants,

to plant pollinator

plants, to plant native plants,

to be very

selective in what we choose to plant

so that we're helping to improve

our areas.

One of the things that I did with Rochelle is that I worked with the East Fork Kiwanis, and we planted a pollinator garden this year. And

the pollinator garden, of course, bees,

all of the things that we need for pollinating butterflies.

We planted it in front of the Williamsburg

Farmers Market at the Williamsburg Community

Park. Yeah. And we loved watching

all of the pollinators be drawn to this black topped area that never had a plant or a bee,

and, it was an exceptionally,

positive

impact.

And they're just in three metal water troughs. So

it doesn't take a big space. It can be a very small space. And bees will go a long way to find what they want. So what are some of the If I wanted to plant a pollinator garden, what are some of the plants I should be looking at, especially native plants? Yeah,

there are a variety of them. I would say

looking at a variety of different plants is probably the best thing.

Because this was a water trough

looking

garden,

it wasn't anything in the ground. We

wanted things that could survive

and flourish in a small space.

So we did some native grasses. Grasses are very good.

For pollinators. Yes.

I didn't think of that. Do they have I just cut my grass. I've never actually grown Well, it's not like your cut grass. What

kind of grasses?

Do they have flower? Do they flower? Yes. Lot of grasses do flower,

and a lot of them have very interesting texture and color as well, so that makes the planting very interesting.

Anything

that flowers and blooms

that attracts bees is a good

a good suggestion.

Bees are very attracted to the color red,

yellow.

There are a lot of vining plants too, cardinal vine, there are a lot of I've never heard of cardinal vine. What is that?

It has a very

tiny flower,

red in color, and it mimics almost what you would see on a hummingbird feeder.

Oh, okay. The center red portion of the yellow flower in the feeder. Yeah. Yeah. That

cardinal vine mimics that same plant.

That's awesome. You guys get a lot of hummingbirds in the pollinator garden? I

have seen some,

and we have a lot of hummingbirds at our house as well.

I

don't know if swarm is the right term for it. Was

a couple days They migrate.

Yeah. And we didn't know what was happening. So, we went outside and the sky is full of hummingbirds. I've never seen as many hummingbirds in my life. And we didn't know what was going on. And I think when we looked it up, it was something about they're getting ready to migrate,

but they were everywhere. I mean, absolutely everywhere was cool. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to derail you on your

I do that just to just to warn you. Sometimes I'll hear something, we'll go on a weird tangent.

So what else what other plants do you do you like for pollinator gardens?

Gosh. There are just so many. I'm really

grasping to kind of think of specific plants. What are your favorites? One

thing that I would really recommend, Wimbergh Landscaping,

which Wins

is a

landscaping

organization

here in

Greater Cincinnati. 50. Right? On 50 in Milford,

they have an amazing pollinator garden that you can visit any day for free. Is that what they have up front? Mhmm. Okay. Because I drive past that all the time and it's beautiful. They've got this beautiful landscape.

They do. Absolutely beautiful.

And they have such a huge variety of pollinator plants.

I would definitely recommend going there and looking at And they'll let you just look anytime.

Oh, it's a sneaky marketing tactic too. Good for them.

The person who

has been our speaker from Weimburg

is Jennifer Smith. She is a horticulturist

and her specialty really is native gardens.

She's planted

not just there at Weimburg,

but also Weimburg has a garden

in Alt

Altpark. Altpark in Hyde Park. Okay. And the Altpark

Weimburg

native plants are also amazing. Are they? So it's really

it's wonderful because you can see them here in Milford on Route 50, but also in the city That's awesome. In Ault Park.

Jennifer is an amazing,

amazing artist.

I would call her an artist. She's a horticulturist,

but she's an artist as well. I think,

at least for me,

because my wife, in addition to being a contractor, her and her father, he had a landscaping business and then

he started building things. So

she knows a lot about plants.

Composition.

I just don't think compositionally, but that's a big thing. Like, you want it to look nice. You can't just throw a bunch of seeds on the ground and have a scraggly mess of stuff. When we were talking about pollinator gardens, one of the reasons I don't wanna be too specific about what plants you should plant, It depends upon how much light,

where it's located.

There are such a wide range of plants that you could choose.

So

if you're really interested in a pollinator garden, I would go there first and look

because you'll be able to see things

that are really sun tolerant versus those that need shade or those that need a lot of water versus those that are

more apt to thrive in a dry environment.

And

I'm sorry, I forgot what I was gonna ask. So I'm gonna pivot to a different question that I don't wanna ask.

Can we talk about invasive species a little bit? Sure. The first thing I wanna ask is about that boxwood moth.

Have you heard about that or?

I'm familiar with it. I didn't know if you knew anything about it. My wife is extremely worried

about this box because we have boxwoods all around our our Oh, and I love boxwoods. I think loves them too. Just

a beautiful plant.

And

boxwoods have been struggling over the last few years when we had that really cold snap early.

Goodness. This has been maybe three or four years ago. We had a cold snap with snow

early, early November.

Mhmm. And it really

it it killed a lot of boxwoods.

And it was interesting because we went, on a field trip to

Spring Grove Cemetery,

and we did

a tram ride through

their plantings through the through the cemetery.

A big cemetery. It is huge. And the horticulturists

there are so smart.

And of course,

some of the trees that are there are champion trees.

They're the largest trees in Ohio are growing in

Spring Grove Cemetery. I had no idea.

That tram ride is so much fun. Is that open to the public? You need to sign up. Sure. But it's in the evenings.

I think there's a small cost for it, but not much. And

it has a limited number of people that they can take.

But we focused not only on horticulture,

but some of the history too when we were there.

And the

boxwood is one of the things that the horticulturists

there talked with us about because

they were struggling. And of course, they have a lot of boxwood

in Spring Grove.

They're kind of temperamental, aren't they? I mean, they're not it's not I don't know if I'd call it a hard I don't know if I'd it anything,

but I don't think they're a very hardy

plant. You kinda gotta care for them.

A bit. And they probably thrive better a little further south than we are. We're probably pushing it to plant a lot of Zone them up

six, right? That's correct. Six b? Six b. Okay. That's right.

Learned that I did from my

not just come up with because when we were out in Felicity,

we wanted to grow things and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to grow. And she knew we were in Zone 6, but not the B part.

She needs to join the garden club. Oh, I think she wants to.

We're a little busy with the kids, but I think once

our plan is, it's like once the youngest gets to five, that should be when everything kind of stabilizes a little bit because

our daughter's five and you can already tell she's a lot more self sufficient. But

that's actually neither here nor there. She knows a lot about gardening.

But she is really I'm a menace when it comes to gardening. I'll tell you a quick story. We have a Japanese maple

in the front of our house and it's a beautiful tree.

We also have pavers that go up to our front door and they always get weeds in them. And I'm always either spraying them or just hitting them with a weed whacker or whatever. I finally got one of those propane torches this year.

And I was really excited about it and a little too aggressive with it, and I got it a little bit too close to that Japanese maple and I, like, scorched

Oh, dear. At the bottom of it.

I know.

I was in the doghouse for that for a little bit. Is it gonna survive? I think yeah. I think it'll make it. There's another patch that we have

because I'll try to weed and mulch like I'm doing. Like, I'll get the weeds out and I'll put the mulch down. Obviously not gonna have Katie do that.

But there's this little patch

of and there's Rudbeckia in there. And I just ripped it all out and she got so mad,

so mad about it.

I'm a menace.

Well, we have bees. We have two hides of bees. Oh, do you? And

I have to admit, I'm just like you because

I really was aggravated by all of the weeds in our drive. Mhmm. And I thought, I'm gonna get rid of this. Mhmm. I'm gonna spray. I'm gonna kill this. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. That was great. Not only did I kill the grass You killed all your bees. I killed all my bees. Yeah. We had to start over. Is there a good

there a good way to get rid of weeds and

like between pavers that is efficient, but also

not gonna

scorch trees or kill bees? There isn't, is there?

No.

Not in my experience.

I'm stuck either with fire, chemicals or hands. Yeah.

Or just

decide that

you're not gonna plant anything that close.

I don't know. Not a good answer for that one. No, that's all right. Don't include that in the interview.

So what what invasives

are probably the the most would you say are the most problematic?

The honeysuckle is just everywhere.

How do you how have you found because we wrestle with honey. We wrestled with it at Felicity.

There's some I know we have honeysuckle somewhere in our property.

Yeah. I I, you know, I watch the park board struggle with it. I watch everybody struggle with honeysuckle and

really just have to get out there and pull it and

cut it as close to the ground as you can. And then mostly, I've seen chemicals be the most effective. I think I've heard if you can chop it down and then kind of drill

and then dump your Chemical into it. Chemical right into it. That seems to be a way to go. Yeah. But that stuff is I remember out in Felicity, we'd try to rip it out and you would see how it would grow around other

plants and literally

strangling them. Yes.

I think I've mentioned this on other podcasts, but you work out in nature and you work land and you realize you know, like you go to some place like Alt Park and it's all nice and manicured and it looks beautiful and you think, oh, this is nature and beautiful. And then you go out and you see real nature like honeysuckle just strangling things to survive

and go, oh, man, even these plants

are aggressive.

Like everything out here is trying to kill each other. It's crazy.

Well, I'd like to kind of share some of the field trips that we've done and some of

the things that we've learned as a group.

I really like

visiting small farms and small farms that are getting started. There

is a new farm called Clover Valley Farm.

Jill and Nate Peremin are the owners.

A very young couple with very small children,

and they're growing pumpkins,

sunflowers,

zinnias,

and their plan is to become a Christmas tree farm. Oh, nice. That's a that's a long game.

And it is

a beautiful piece of property.

And

they're

doing it right. They're doing it slowly.

They both have full time jobs while they're doing this

and small children to manage. So

we visited their farm, and all of us were just mesmerized

by what they've been able to do

on a very small scale, but with their plans.

They're between Williamsburg

and Bethel. Is

that 133?

Does that sound right? I have no idea. I'm terrible with directions.

People will tell me like, oh, you know that thing down by the road and over there? And I'm like, know.

I've lived here thirty years and I can't remember the difference between 01/1933

and 01/1931.

Although I do know 02/22.

I only know two twenty two because I live on 222.

And I know 125 because I know that goes through Amelia.

But other than that, it's

blank.

Are there a lot of while you're looking for that, if you don't mind filling in some questions.

Because I've

interviewed,

her name is Sarah Eisen and they do livestock, so they're not growing plants.

It one seems 33 in Bethel. 133 in Bethel. But it does seem like

there's a fair bit of people who are trying to do that. Like more so than I would say

ten, fifteen years ago, it seems like there's a real trend of people who think or are thinking,

why don't I try to get

five, ten acres or even more or whatever it takes and start a little kind of homestead farm? Are you seeing more of those,

would you say? Or do you know? If you don't know, that's fine. I would say that some of our younger members,

especially, that is kind of their thought and their

members to try to learn more and

explore

those opportunities.

I'm sure COVID is what really generated a lot of this thought

because people had to really think, what do I want for my family?

How do I really want to live? Self

sufficiency.

And how can we take care of each other? It seems like And I'd say people probably around my age and my wife's age, it seems like there's a real movement of people

trying to go back to kind of, oh, like my wife cans and

she makes bread and we don't grow anything, not yet. I

tried to have a garden once, but it was terrible. I'll tell you about that later. But it just seems like there's a real trend. One of the things that's been really amazing is that the Williamsburg

Farmers Market, which meets on Wednesdays

from four to seven during the growing season.

It starts in May and ends in October.

But the thing that's really impressed me is,

as you just suggested,

all of these young farmers

all wanting to grow and sell their produce.

And when we first started, it was all women.

So

the market continues to grow every year.

We started primarily with vegetables and now we

have chicken, we have pork, we have eggs.

So there's a wide range of product there beyond just produce.

Yeah. And I think people because

know, obviously, when my wife and I were living in the city,

we just go to the grocery store because we didn't know any farmers. But since moving out here, I mean, we get our cows from a farmer. We're gonna get a pig from a farmer. Our eggs from a farmer. Our milk from a farmer. Like, we're getting all this stuff directly from small farms. Mhmm. And it's

some some of the prices are comparable

to what you'd find. Some of them are cheaper. Like, eggs are probably a little cheaper than they are in the supermarket right now.

But the quality of it is just

it blew me away. Like, I can't eat

store bought eggs. I mean, I could if I was in a pinch, but

the farm eggs, it's just

they're just better.

Well, and knowing what you're eating too. And who grows it.

You know? Exactly.

And

I'm sure you've heard the Campbell's soup story.

Always made with real chicken. Always made with real chicken. What an odd thing to say. We grew up on that. We ate chicken soup all the time. I can't imagine that it's something now that I'm not gonna ever eat again. But knowing

do you have to say your soup your chicken soup has real chicken in it? That should just be assumed. It should be real chicken. So

I think even know what fake chicken is. What have they been putting in that soup?

I don't know. But when you come to the farmer's market and you see the chicken and you buy the chicken, you know that that's where the chicken came from.

Shake a farmer's hand and like, hey, how'd you grow this? And they'll tell you. They love to tell you. They love it. Like the person we get milk from, they are

happy to take you through their facility and show you how they're doing things. And especially with raw milk, you wanna make sure you're getting it from a good source. But

it's an interesting trend. And I think you're right. I think COVID sparked a lot of it.

I

think the realization that

the society we live in is a lot more fragile than people think it actually is. Something like that can just

nuke

all production and your

life and all that stuff. So

I just thought it was an interesting trend. It is. Definitely.

What

are some of other farms you've been to? Or unless you wanted to I see you have a list if you wanted to go through it. Want

you to jump around too much. Well,

maybe I can just kind of talk about some of the things that the Garden Club does every year. Yeah. We have a huge plant auction every spring.

The plant auction has grown by leaps and bounds. It's our biggest fundraiser

of the year. Mhmm. And we are a nonprofit.

So all of the money that we generate from any plant sales or any of the sales that we do,

all of the money goes to scholarships

for students.

Nice. And, again, we're trying to promote

science, technology,

engineering, and math with our scholarship.

I'm always so excited when we award the scholarship

in June to

to a deserving senior and send them off with money. It's great.

So

what some of the things that we do, the plant auction,

occurs

the first

Tuesday,

typically the first Tuesday in June.

And

many

vendors,

local vendors,

donate plants to us and donate product to us for that plant auction.

The garden club grows their own plants Mhmm. And then

also shares and

brings their plantings or their cuttings or

separated plants.

So you get a lot of really good, well established plants when you buy at the plant auction as well.

That's one of our largest fundraisers.

And then in the fall every year, we have a mum sale at State Route 32 and McIver

on,

a heritage farm,

and that also is a farm that has the America 250 mural on it. Nice. It is the regional mural for all of Southwest Ohio. And this year, it's painted, of course, with the Underground Railroad and some of the sites that you see in our region Mhmm. On the barn.

So at that barn and at that farm, we sell mums

starting in August through September.

Okay. And that's a big fundraiser for us as well. My wife loves mums too.

I'll have to keep that in mind. She's always looking for good mums.

And then we do a lot of community plantings. We plant all of the flowers on the bridge in Williamsburg.

We plant pots, community

town pots that are on all of the corners throughout the village of Williamsburg.

We planted the welcome signs that say welcome to Williamsburg on State Route 32. So you guys are keeping that city beautiful,

And then we have a memorial garden

at the old high school

that has

plaques from all of the gardeners who have been a part of the garden club

and who have contributed to doing these projects that we still continue to do today.

Nice. Yeah. So is that

guess back up a little bit on the Garden Club. So it sounds like there's a

community aspect as

well. It's not just you go and learn how to grow plants, but you actually get out in the community and grow things. Yes. Our mission includes making sure that we beautify our community.

And one of the big misnomers about Williamsburg Garden Club is that you have to live in Williamsburg to be a gardener there. That is not correct at all.

We

have gardeners from East Fork, from East I'm sorry, not East Fork, Eastgate

Mhmm. Batavia,

Williamsburg,

Bethel,

as far away as Midland,

Ohio.

I don't even know where Midland is. Where is Midland? Almost to Xenia. Really? I know where Xenia is. That's

drive.

We

have members from Bethel, New Richmond. So,

even though it's the Williamsburg

Garden Club, it really is a regional garden club and being the largest in our area.

That's incredible.

That's a really big garden club. It is.

It is.

So what other community projects do you do or is that about it?

Well, we have a community project

tomorrow.

Oh, what's tomorrow?

Tomorrow is the Trains of Williamsburg.

Oh, I've been hearing about that. Yes. Yeah. It's, a Hallmark Christmas as Rochelle likes to call it.

And I guess for people listening, Rochelle Bowling. Rochelle I'm sorry. Rochelle Bowling. Well, I we both know her. I go to the gym with her in the morning, and I think she's in the garden club. And I think she's pretty well established in Williamsburg too. She is. Yeah.

And

the

village

fills all of the trees on Main Street with

bright white lights.

Nice. And then Do you have an opinion on Christmas lights? Oh, yes. Definitely white. And then

I'm glad. We can still be friends.

And then the bridge is decorated in garland and lights as well.

And

there are memorial trees that are along

Main Street that are decorated by different organizations in memory of people, which is very wonderful, beautiful,

all unique and different trees. And

then the big thing is the is the event itself, which starts tomorrow.

There's a tree lighting at 6PM.

Mhmm. And there's a student who's lighting the tree this year. Nice. Which is very nice.

The elementary school will be singing carols.

The high school sings Christmas carols.

The jazz band plays for a bit. Then- This is tomorrow? This is tomorrow. Unfortunately, this will probably air well

past it,

because I do event read offs at the end of the episodes

and I've been seeing trains because they'll have trains in the windows of shops too.

All of the Christmas events around You the county, can

call me next year when you get ready to do something for December. And

seriously, if you just want to bring your five year old and come look. That's what, like of all the events,

because it seems ideally. It's really kid focused. It seems like

something out of a storyboard. It is. So, Santa arrives on his sled. Nice.

And then there

are train rides for small children,

but there's also fire engine rides. So your children can ride on a fire engine. I got to see what we're doing tomorrow night because I think Olive would just Since

having kids, I used to be a bit of a Grinch.

But since having kids, I've turned into the jolliest person you've ever seen in your life. They're like, Christmas is coming, and we've got a lot and things.

I'm gonna have to take her there tomorrow. So it starts everything starts at 04:00 tomorrow because at 04:00,

the mural dedication for Williamsburg

happens. Nice.

The America 250 mural,

and there are lots of images on the mural that reflect the history of the village. It's a very unique mural, and it tells the story.

Not only is America 250

years old next year, but Williamsburg is 230

years old. Yeah. And so many of the

founding

families that came to Williamsburg

two thirty years ago were American Revolutionary War

veterans. This was all land grants, right? Was like, thank you for your service. There's a bunch of land in Ohio.

Virginia Military District.

So William Lytle came here, the founder of Williamsburg,

to survey land and to give land to those American revolutionary soldiers.

And what I love and what makes unique something

that's so unique about Williamsburg is that

so many of those families are still here. Yeah. So their families passed that land to their children, their children's children.

And when you look at when you visit Harmony Hill Museum and you look at the original

land that was surveyed by William Lytle,

you see names of families that are still there in Williamsburg. I talked to Paige Craig at the Genealogical Society,

and listening to her talk about just all the different families,

family, and

many, many other families that have just old,

old families that have been here for two hundred years. I mean, also, I've interviewed a fair bit of people from Bethel,

a lot of people, families like that in Bethel, but they also live exceptionally long in Bethel. Have you ever

there's

many, many people in Bethel who apparently live well into their nineties and hundreds,

And I have a sneaking suspicion that they have a fountain of youth in Bethel,

and they're not telling anybody.

And I haven't gotten anybody to confirm that, but

it's odd how long people live in Bethel.

Move to Bethel. Yeah. Exactly. I'm thinking about it. I mean, there's something in the water.

We

do a lot of things

in addition to events.

One of the fun things that we do in the fall is scarecrows on Main Street. Have you heard of this? I haven't. You need to do this. Add this to your list for next fall. I will. My wife is slightly scared of scarecrows, though. If she I think they These are friendly scare crows, I promise. I don't know. Think there's something about

them that Katie doesn't like very much, but I'll take her. I won't tell her about that unless she listens to this, which she probably will.

You have to do is drive through. You don't even have to get out of your car, so they won't be scary. It'll be okay. We'll have a we'll have a window between us.

It started,

I would think this might be our fifth year for scarecrows in Main on Main Street.

And it started with just a few scarecrows made by children and a few made by club members. And it's grown year after year after year. So

you can do like fun scarecrows.

Does anybody Anyone do like really scary

can join in and do it.

We've had very simple scarecrows,

and we've had very elaborate

scarecrows that have won year after year because they're so ornate and so well done.

The scarecrows are placed on the poles that lead in and out of the village.

So you can just

as you drive through the village, you don't have to get out of your car, the scarecrows.

And it was actually great during COVID

because

we had scarecrows that people could see and something that was

fun and enjoyable and fall like that everyone could

enjoy. This

year, we had a huge number of businesses in Williamsburg participate.

Nice. So for example, Fitzgerald's

Pharmacy

used their theme of medicine

for their scarecrow. So their scarecrow was dressed like a nurse. She had pills in her pocket.

The Flower Bee, which is the new bakery,

made a

scarecrow that looked like a bee

with a flower skirt. It was adorable.

So

we are encouraging businesses to participate along Main Street as well. You auction the scarecrows off? We do not. They

just go up on the poles,

and then they come down a few days before Halloween,

and they go back to the owner who made them so the owner can use them for Halloween. Oh, that's nice. There was

an event in Middletown. One of my mom

I think she organized. I can't remember. Maybe it was in Cancer Society or something. It was some kind of fundraiser around Christmas time.

What they would do is they were all fake trees, but they would have companies decorate these trees.

There was a florist in Middletown, Rogers Flowers,

just the most beautiful tree. And then they'd auction them off to raise money. That's why I asked. But I

love events like that where businesses get involved and they decorate their scarecrows for their business. And then it's

really cool. It sounds like a really awesome thing. The children are the best because

they're so excited to bring their scarecrow. And

then to be able to drive down the street and see their scarecrow through Main Street, it's very cool. That's awesome.

What age could so how does somebody like, I don't live in Williamsburg because You don't have to live make a scarecrow and take it over there? Okay. Cool.

The

everyone brings their scarecrow to the Williamsburg Farmers Market

in mid September,

and there's a judging

that happens. So there are some prizes,

the prizes and ribbons to

different categories. So there's a children's category, an adult category,

and next year there'll be a business category as well. Nice. I'm

sorry, when was that again?

Mid September. Mid September. Okay. That's awesome.

Can I ask you

about Williamsburg just in general? Because I talk to Rochelle pretty

frequently in talking to you, and it seems like

Would you say people in Williamsburg have a strong sense of community? It seems like that

drive through the downtown and it

just looks really nice. And I don't know what you guys are doing out there

Well, think to it accomplish

has a lot to do with it.

When you're saying you're planting all these things, I'm like, man, every

time I drive through Williamsburg,

seems alive. And I think the flowers are a big part of that. I think so too. And

I think just community pride. One of the things I've really enjoyed

about being a part of the mural project for America February

is that

when the painter Ben Harrison was painting images on the wall of the library, it's on the Williamsburg

branch library wall. Mhmm. When he was painting,

people

driving through the village would

stop and honk and give him the thumbs up and Yeah. Hey. It looks great. And

I think just

feeling a a sense of community and pride and their history makes them kind of unique.

I don't see that too much in Batavia, but I see that a lot in Williamsburg.

Well, there's a lot going on in Batavia.

Live here, I know.

Oh, do you? Yes. Do you live in the village or It's the South a big secret. Here's

this woman who does all this work in Williamsburg and she lives in Batavia.

I've been

Oh, that whole thing.

I definitely don't want to get into that whole thing.

I wouldn't know how to begin either.

And it's still going. It was just the other day I listened to a

commissioner meeting

and they're annexing more land by the airport and everybody's going to get mad about that. I

don't know. I'm

always kind of of the position like, well, we should all just get along. Like,

we're all trying to work towards a better Batavia, so let's try to do that, but whatever.

We were not going to get into that. One other thing I'd like to share is that last year we did something very exceptional for our flower,

our our garden club.

Williamsburg Garden Club's been around for ninety years. Mhmm. But last year,

a group of us from the Garden Club were a part of Art in Bloom at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Okay. Do you know anything about that activity? I don't.

It is a juried

show.

You are given a piece of artwork,

and then

you have to

interpret that in flowers

That's interesting. In plants. Many

art museums across the country and actually across the world do something similar. There

is an

application process,

and you really have to do a lot of things to qualify to be

selected,

to be able to participate in Art in Bloom. So it's

not like you just sign up and you're good to go. How do you qualify? There is an application that you have to fill out. You have to submit some of the things that you've done in the past

and talk about your experience.

And

I think it was

a little scary. We didn't really think we were gonna get selected because there are so many professional designers

and professional

florists that are a part of that event, that we were just kind of a hometown

gardening club. We were like, oh, I don't know if we can do this.

And

it was an amazing experience.

There are

lots of activities

tied around it,

luncheons,

garden club events,

and a gala that's

amazing.

So

one of our members,

Vicki Whelan,

actually won second place

for the entire show. Really? And we were just thrilled for her.

The look on her face was just amazing when she won. What painting did she have? She had a very,

I I believe it was a Dutch masters,

era of painting,

with a young boy who was a cobbler

polishing shoes for a woman who or young woman.

And the two of them looked,

just the gaze between the two of them,

was really

enamoring. Yeah.

And, he's polishing her shoes. She has flowers in her hair and a really beautiful dress on.

And

Vicky did an amazing job of interpreting

the painting and using a lot of the same color and texture

in her plants.

So it

was an amazing

So when you approach something like that because it doesn't sound like there's a whole lot of floral elements in what she had to work like the painting she had to work with. So you're literally trying to capture

the color scheme and the textures of the scene and,

I guess, you'd say even the motion of the scene somehow. And the garden club itself received a

Madonna and child

carving that was from Italian,

tenth or eleventh century.

Tenth or eleventh. Yes. That's interesting. So it's a sculpture. Yeah. So we went and saw So it's not even just paintings. You could get a sculpture

that you have to It's a statue. Yeah. Yeah. It's a religious statue of Madonna and Child. Did it have cloth? I think I might even know the one you're talking about. Did it have, like, a cloth over somebody?

It has

a lot of gold elements and a lot of green and red.

And, again, we had to interpret that in flowers.

So

we were able to use different plant material that had, again, the same

shades of color, the same texture.

We learned a huge amount. We had to This is all arranging flowers, right? It's not like growing a garden. Correct. This is all arranging.

But we took inspiration from some of our own flowers and some of our own gardens when we were trying to determine what we were gonna use and what plant material or colors to use to interpret the sculpture.

Do you guys do a lot of floral floral arranging in general? I know you said that's part of it. Is is it a how big of a component is that of the garden club?

I

would say that

as the garden club has evolved,

the floral arranging is something that we do probably once a year or once or twice a year.

We did an historic

a home tour in

Williamsburg,

and we did floral arrangements for each of the homes that were in Oh, nice. In the show.

So not only did we

create floral arrangements,

but

they had to be somewhat historic in nature to match the historic home that they were being placed in. Well, the reason I ask is because,

like, floral arrangements, it's another one of those things where if you do it right,

you don't notice the comp like, it just looks natural and like it's supposed to be it's one of those things that if you do floral arrangements right,

it looks like it's supposed to be there.

We're a part of the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs, the OAGC.

And two years ago, we had our own flower show here in Williamsburg once And,

we used the entire high school,

as a space for the flower show. Oh, nice. We did, creative arrangements,

artistic design, and then we also had horticulture.

So if you had a tomato that was the best looking tomato, you could still bring that to the flower show. Was part of it. Tomatoes.

So we work with the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs and follow their rules regarding design.

And there's a rule book that's about four inches thick.

For designing. For flower arrangements. Correct. Really, there's a rule book. There's a rule book. What are some of the rule? I didn't know that this was something that had rules. Oh, absolutely. If it's a horizontal design, if it's a vertical design, there are certain requirements. What do you mean by horizontal and vertical?

Sometimes an arrangement can be very tall. Other times it can be very long. Okay. Well, okay. That makes sense. And

there are also

different

requirements for

arrangements

based upon height

and width Okay. And

some of the elements that you're allowed to use or not use. So there are actually rules.

And even What can't you use?

For example Plastic flowers or something? Exactly. Yeah. No plastic.

Nothing artificial.

Some

dried materials depending upon the rules for that specific classification

and that category

of of

plant.

Do they have flower arranging at the fair the county fair? Yes. They do.

Owensburg. Yes. In Owensville,

at the county fair, there is

there is a flower show. Mhmm. And, again, it can be flowers and arrangements, but it can also be

agriculture. Squash. Right. Yeah. This is my pumpkin.

So, yes, absolutely.

That's awesome. I didn't realize there was a rule book. Yes, there's a rule book. I mean, of course, there's rules for everything, I suppose.

Let's see, I think I'm coming to the end of my gardening question. Did you wanna talk more about Harmony Hill?

Unless you have more to talk about gardening. I don't wanna stop you if you're on Just roll or quickly, if I need a couple of notes to make sure I haven't forgotten. Well, before we get away from gardening,

it's on Olive Branch, CSA.

Have you guys gone to them at all? I could I think they do cut flowers.

I

can't remember the name of it.

Owensville CSA.

It's in Batavia. I'm sorry. Batavia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a

so if you're

going on 222 towards fifty and then you take a left on the olive branch,

and if you keep going, you'll see it.

It's off to the left.

And I know they grow food and they'll do like most CSAs, you sign up and then you get your vegetables.

But I think they I know they do cut flowers because I bought some for my wife.

Do you know do you know a name or phone number? Can't remember the name. I I know I reached out to them a long when I first started because I wanted to interview them. So, I haven't been there. So, If that's on my you're driving on Olive Branch, take a look. Because he does a lot of vegetables because, again, he sells those.

But my suspicion is that his wife,

they have beautiful sunflowers. They're the

almost like a like a burnt orange or reddish sunflower.

I mean, they're they're gorgeous flowers. Yeah. Yeah. If you can get me some more information. Yeah. When when we're done here, I'll because I know they have a website. I'll I'll show you.

Let's see.

Oh, the the Garden Club has also worked with the Claremont County Park District. We did a terrarium You worked with Chris Klingman? Yes. I I interviewed him, and

was so funny. He was because I interviewed him at Klingman Park and I show up, I'm like, are you the Chris Klingman? Like, this is your park? This is him. And he goes he grumbled. He was like, I don't really wanna talk about that. I was like, Chris, I have to. We're in a park named after you. I have to ask you about that.

We can't just not talk about the He's very humble. He's helped me in so many ways at Harmony Hill,

at the Garden Club.

So we taught a terrarium class that was sold out before it even started. So it was a lot of fun.

Something about terrariums I love. Oh, and in the middle of the winter to create a terrarium, that's the right time. It was perfect. It was a lot of fun.

We've also done

or applied for a lot of hometown grants through Lowe's

for planting.

We had a

have a community project that we would like to do

that includes

native plantings

and

pollinator garden,

but also includes

updating some of the playground equipment at Williamsburg,

so that it can be modified for those with disabilities or those in wheelchairs. So,

we've been working on that. We have not gotten the funding, but we wrote

submitted a grant. Did you have to write a lot of grants?

We've written a few.

Anytime I talk to people who write grants, I always like to commiserate with how terrible it is writing grants. I do that for Harmony Hill. My title there is grant writer. Oh, no. So yes, I know a lot about that. Oh, man. It's

so involved.

We also plant

flowers at the Claremont YMCA,

as well as the elementary school and the high school. Nice. And with Claremont County YMCA,

we also had a day where we

distributed

seeds and we did a seed planting day with

the Y. So that was free. You guys do a lot of stuff. When I was talking to Rochelle and I heard Williamsburg Garden Club, thought, oh, that's interesting. People just gardening and

you do a lot. It's a community organization

as well as a gardening

organization.

So That's impressive. Yeah. One of our members last year received

an award for garden of the year for her garden. Nice. Diana Dickinson,

she's a retired judge,

and she has the most amazing,

well planned garden we have ever seen.

And it won for the region, for all of Southwest Ohio. So we're very proud of her for that. What did she do? She has a new home and she built

raised beds for her garden.

And

after

not

much time, she knew she had to fence that because the deer in her area would eat everything that she planted in those nice raised beds. Yeah. Thank you for this perfect We can only shoot so many deer.

These

plants I try my best during hunting season. But These plants are at the perfect height for me to nibble on.

But her garden is extremely well planned.

She

has

very intentionally

planted specific native plants as well as her garden.

And

we're very proud of the work that she did.

I told you I was running out of questions, but now I'm just having more.

Would you say

I'm trying to think how to frame this.

I guess it's a landscaping question. If I wanted my

garden or my landscape to look

good

throughout the year, so it has a bloom in spring and a nice bloom in summer,

would you go about approaching that? And is that something that she tried to do with hers? That's called succession

planning. Okay. Planting. Excuse me. Succession

planting.

And

in a in a vegetable garden, there are certain things that you would plant early, then you would replace them with something else as the season got warmer.

And then into the fall, again, you could plant some of the early spring things that you planted because those would the

temperature and the moisture levels are good again for planting those

those crops again.

But for planning your landscaping,

that's a little different. You need to kind of think

for season.

There are lots of wonderful books and lots of planning tools and of course, landscaping centers that you can go to for advice.

We have several members that are

arborists that

can look at a landscape or

come visit your garden and give you some ideas or some suggestions too. So,

again, it depends upon

sun, shade,

water, lack of water. There's so many environmental

issues you have to think about when considering what you're going to plant where.

But, you know, truly the

the whole secret is plant the right plant in the right place at the right time,

and then things thrive. Well, I think that's one of the

positives of gardening. Not that there's many negatives, but

you get to know your land and you get to know your plants. It

just connects you in a way that

is unique.

You mentioned books, and

I hope I get the name of this book right. It's old. It's from the 1920s or '30s. I think it's called Five Acres in Freedom,

I think. Do you know that book? I'm afraid I don't.

When we moved out to Felicity, I just randomly found it at a Half Price Books.

And it's from the '20s or '30s, so it's probably a little dated.

But he goes through all the different crops and plantings you can do if you've just got five acres, and it was made for people in the '20s or '30s who wanted to move from the city and become kind of a small farmer. It's a really good book. I wish I could remember the name. I think it's Five Acres of Freedom. It's

a good book. I'll have to look for that. Yeah.

Let's see.

Oh, I know the next thing I wanted to ask you about if unless No. Go ahead. I'm just Raised beds. Yes. Do you have an opinion on raised beds? Raised beds are great. You like them? I do. Why do you like because my wife wants to put in raised beds. Because I'm getting older.

I'm tired of bending over and my back hurts all the time.

Raised beds are good.

Also, you can control the soil. Okay. That makes a lot of sense.

And the amount of moisture something gets.

So having that control makes a better garden. What's

the best way to construct a raise? Does it matter if it's like a metal hoop or

wood or whatever. But the Master Gardener volunteers at in Owensville with Ohio State University,

we created new raised beds this year and they're just beautiful.

They're

anyone can come take a look at what we did and what we created.

We used a variety of different materials, which was very smart because people can come and look and think,

okay. This is what it looks like if it's railroad ties. Mhmm. This is what it looks like in a metal Yeah.

Trough look.

This is what it looks like if it's

a variety of cedar and different types of wood. Mhmm.

We even created a

cold frame so that you have a window like a glass,

like a greenhouse that you can plant in as well. That's the other thing my wife wants to eventually build is an actual greenhouse, which I would love actually, but

dreams.

Again, got to get our kids to a good point before we start chasing these weird greenhouse dreams.

But I would definitely, if you're thinking of doing raised beds, I would definitely go to Owensville and look at the

They're called demo gardens or demonstration gardens

that the Master Gardeners have

created. They're brand new, so if you haven't been in a few years, these are different.

Where is this in Owensville again? It's at the Fairgrounds. The Fairgrounds, okay. And it's the Ohio State University Master Gardener Volunteers

and their demo garden. How do you become a master gardener? Is it like karate where you have belts and There's a process

for doing it.

You do need to have a background check, so you need to be fingerprinted because you work with

children

and the public at large.

That's an intense, but that makes sense. Yeah. You need to fill out an application. The application is online. You can find it.

And

then you need to go through a program

it's a science based

focus on planting.

And the program is excellent. It's everything from the history of Master Gardeners, how it started, and

the relationship with Ohio State University

through

every aspect of

planting a vegetable garden,

trees and shrubs,

bees,

pollinators,

entomology.

And that's bugs, right? Bugs. Yeah.

And then at the end of the course, there's an exam. So you have to pass an exam.

There's also a cost.

When I took the class, it was $200

to become a Master Gardener. That seems pretty reasonable for all it also seems like you're getting trained.

Then after

you've passed the test, you're considered an intern

and you need to volunteer in the community for fifty hours

the first year. Okay.

And that sounds like it's not too hard because I I volunteer all the time. Yeah. But

I'm only at thirty seven

hours, and I'm at the end of the year. So,

I'll have to keep working on this early next year to complete

my number of hours to become a full fledged Master Gardener. You get a cool hat or anything?

No. But you can buy a t shirt. Oh, that's cool.

No. You get the recognition, really. I think for me personally

like that, you should get cool hats for it. I don't really need another hat.

Don't need another But t

I think just having the knowledge and the understanding and then volunteering in the community, going out and talking about plants and

helping people plan their gardens or helping them answer, What kind of bug is on my sweet potato here?

Those are some of the things that we do to help the community. Can we talk about pests a little bit? Gosh, I hope I know enough. Sure, go ahead.

I guess just good ways of getting rid of them.

Because

if you have a garden, especially if you have a vegetable garden,

you don't want to be spraying too many things on it to kill stuff. I don't want to spray anything on my Ideally,

that would be what you do. My

father-in-law has a huge garden, and I know he uses seven, I think it is. And so, we have to wash all of our stuff very, very carefully that we get from it. Yeah. The big thing about any chemicals that you use in your garden, first of all, make sure that you're applying them correctly.

Everyone

thinks more is better. No. It is not better. Follow the label, follow the instructions,

and

apply as little as necessary.

Do not apply more.

And honestly, I just try to pick everything off. So if

a bug that's on my tomatoes,

off it goes.

Are Yeah. There good natural ways of controlling pests? There are. Some of them are other bugs. Yeah, like ladybugs will go after your aphids, right? Exactly.

What other kind of bugs do you do that? Do you buy ladybugs and release them in your I have done that, and that turned out to be maybe not a good thing either because

And then did you have a ladybug problem? Later,

I still have ladybugs

everywhere.

Do they get in your house and, like, all crawl in the corners and stuff? Yeah.

Ladybugs are great no until these two aphids.

And no aphids.

Are there any other kind of popular

counter bugs, I guess you'd call them, to to bugs you don't want?

Oh. I guess spiders, but I don't I don't know if you wanna release a whole bunch of spiders in there. There are some very bad bugs right now. Are there? We try to do a lot of education about them.

And

the lantern like,

spotted lanternfly

is a really bad bug. What's that look like? I

do have some pictures of him.

And

I even have little cards so that you can see what their holes look like and where they're Is it kinda like a trees. Like a firefly,

like, looking bug? It's actually a beautiful bug. It's, it has pink and black spots.

The the body is pink.

Excuse me.

The body is pink. It's a fairly long bug

and it has spots on it. I've looks these really like a very cool bug, but it does very bad things to your plants. So if you see one, you need to kill Is it invasive?

Yes.

You need to kill it. It's

so wild, the invasive problem, because it's

not something I think about all the time, but you realize

just one little bug

from some other place. That other place, it's got natural controls. Things eat it and everything.

The plants or trees probably have natural protection against it. But then it

hitches a ride across the ocean

and there's

nothing that can stop it. And

that

is a lot of the pests that we have now. I think that

boxwood moth or whatever that is, I think that came from somewhere else, and now it just has a bunch of tasty boxwoods to eat. Exactly.

My wife is very concerned about that. I think she was driving through Milford,

and she came home. She goes, There's something going on with boxwoods. All the boxwoods are dead. I was like, okay. Well, ours look fine. And then, literally, the next podcast, I'm looking up news to do the readout,

and there's that big alert for the There is a spray that you can use. Oh, is there? Yeah. Do you know what it's called? I do. Not off the top of my head, but you can Google it. Okay. You can find it. I'll let her know that. Yeah.

Because boxwoods aren't it's like that Japanese maple. Mean, this is not like, it's expensive landscaping to replace. Yeah. Yeah.

And when we plant them, we've they're all they're also boxwoods are a very cool plant because you can propagate them. So you can Oh, can you? You can take cuttings from them and make more boxwood. Well, that's actually the I'm glad you brought that up because I when we were in Felicity, I tried my hand at propagating, and it's a lot easier than you'd expect. I was dealing with hydrangeas. I just cut them, put a little rooting powder on them and stick them in, and before you know it, they're just growing like crazy.

What are some of the other plants that are boxwoods are easy to propagate?

I wouldn't say easy.

And you can do it with cuttings. Don't have You can do it with cuttings. Okay.

Yeah.

There are a lot of plants that you can propagate from cuttings. Lots of good books too that,

there's so many, I don't even know. If I have to start naming these, I'll be like, Oh, but I didn't talk about this one.

So how would you propagate a boxwood? What's the best way of doing that? From a cutting, just as you did from the hydrangea. Okay. Literally, you'd take something that's kind of new and green and you put

some rooting powder on it and stick it in. And it'll just

Really? After time, yes.

I'm going to have to tell Katie that too. Yeah. Especially if she's worried about

losing some. Yeah. Well, she's worried and our dog. There's this one spot on the boxwoods that he loves to pee on,

and

it has no leaves.

The

dog and me are constantly working against

her beautiful I'm

just burning everything and the dog's peeing on everything and she's just in the house like, Oh, beautiful

landscaping.

Well, Katie needs to become a garden club member. I think she'd really love it. And you can babysit for the one night a month when she goes to the garden club. I'd happily do that. Yeah.

So they meet on Tuesdays, usually the first Tuesday of every month.

Williamsburggardenclub.com,

she can go there, and there's a drop down menu that has what we're doing each month and where it is. So, if we're traveling and we're going to be in Owensville looking at the Master Gardener

demo garden,

she could just come there.

I will tell her.

So, join us for me. She's just one of those people that grows things.

It's a type of person.

I'll tell you my garden story, actually.

We live on a little under four acres, so we've got a pretty decent backyard.

And my father-in-law, who does

a big garden, he has corn and beans, he's got

more vegetables than anybody.

And

wife has six brothers and sisters, and he produces more food than any of us can eat, like giant zucchinis and stuff.

So, anyway, he's got we had a utility tractor that has a PTO,

and he had a tiller.

And he said, well, I'll help you out. Because I was like, I'm thinking about doing a garden.

We'll get this tiller going. We'll hook it up to your tractor.

I know this man loves to till ground.

I didn't know that at the time.

He goes, I'll window box it for you and then you can just go through and till it. And I'm thinking, okay, he's gonna do a little strip along the fence or something like that. No, he does a 50 by 50

square in my backyard.

And now I'm trying to plant peppers and

I just don't like doing it. So, weeds are It was just a mess.

And I did that for two years. I'm like, No, I'm

not a gardener.

I've resigned myself to that. I love it. I love the idea of it, but

I'm just

not

a good gardener.

We like to travel too. So,

I plant a great garden and then we go off camping. And when I come back, it's so full of weeds, I can't even find anything.

My best garden ever was during COVID because he didn't go anywhere. Yeah, actually the

most successful, because I was working from home.

And I feel bad because I think a lot of people I have a friend who lived in DC.

And during that time, he was basically

trapped in an apartment for months and he was going crazy. Meanwhile, I'm on 10 acres and Felicity working from home. And it's like, Oh, well, I don't have much to do today.

I'll just go cut the grass and work on the garden and work on this and get outside.

I had a lovely time during COVID, but I don't think that was the experience many people had. No, I'm afraid not. No.

Which is why it's good to have a hobby like that, not just for COVID things, but just getting outside and

sunlight.

Reconnecting to nature. Yeah.

And I think it's

a little hokey, but I think there is something about just getting dirt on you and

whatever's in the dirt, it just helps you. I think it's healthy. That's why we kick our kids out of the house regularly.

Go outside. Don't play. Yeah, go get dirty. Go do something.

I think it's important. That's what I did as a kid, even growing up in the suburbs.

There'd be lots where they're building houses and we'd run around and get dirty.

I just think it's good for you. It is. It's good for your mental health too.

I don't think I've ever met a gardener

that's an angry person.

I don't know, maybe you have. You've probably met more gardeners than I have.

No, I think that's an interesting

observation.

Yeah, they're all pretty zen people. They're just kind of like, I like growing things. I think they're all pretty nurturing. My wife is very nurturing.

She's got a very good mother instinct.

I think she just likes growing things and that type of person is

think it's hard for them to be mad.

I think it's hard to be mad when you are constantly

growing life.

At least that's my theory. I don't know if it's true or not.

I now have run out of questions about the Garden Club, unless you have anything else. I think that's it. Did you want to talk about Harmony Hill a little bit? I would love to. Okay. And I can't remember what your role there is. I don't wanna I'm a grant writer and an event manager. Oh, nice. Event manager. Yes. Well, how do you like doing events?

We have not had very many events, which has been

we would love to have more.

But

let's kind of start with the basics. Yeah, please do. Harmony Hill Museum

is

located in Williamsburg

and the mission of the Harmony Hill Museum is to preserve

the history of Williamsburg

as we talked about before the

the history of William Lytle who came

to this area

and surveyed land for

Virginia Military

District.

Soldiers from the revolutionary war.

And we've done some very exciting things at Harmony Hill in the last few years.

We've reconstructed

or

constructed

a replica of the land office. I saw that on the website. In which William Lytle

sold

and also

surveyed

land. Yeah. And

and and

Claremont,

Brown,

Claremont,

Brown, Highland.

Trying to think all the counties. It's on the website.

And his

his land office,

we're working right now to make it look like 1796

when he came because you guys here to recently found that foundation, right? They did.

How'd they find it? Southern Ohio surveying group

thought they knew where it was. And they asked for permission to come and see if they could find it. And we're like, oh, sure. Go out there in the dirt, see what you can find.

And they found the remnants of the walls. That's crazy.

Were they down in the dirt or something? Yeah, underground, of course. And

it was very exciting to think that we knew where exactly that was.

It's also crazy that you can still find things. Like you think everything's already found, but no, there's

archeology here in Ohio. Yeah. So, we had the Ohio History Connection and their archeology department come and look at the site.

And then, we started writing grants so that we could

build,

rebuild

the land office and

and

showcase some of the history of Williamsburg.

So, it's very exciting. It's a stone

building.

It

has

very basic

wooden walls and floor.

And,

we recently

purchased

a mannequin

who is

exemplifying what William Lytle looked like when he was a surveyor here in '17 So '90

you got William Lytle in there too. Yes, we do.

We're working very hard so that when people open the door, they enter 1790s,

which is cool. That's really cool. Who are you working with? I imagine some historical societies are helping you and stuff. We have several

We're a member of the Ohio History Connection, but we're also

working with some local people here in Claremont County that are helping us, which is wonderful. Who's helping you? Just out of curiosity. Mike Stretch.

He was with Kingdom Productions, but now he's retired and he's helping us as his retirement project, which we love.

His rates are a little cheaper than Kingdoms.

So we do a lot of educational programs at Harmony Hill. We do something every year called

Pioneer Days.

And we bring children from the third grade to Harmony Hill. All of them get to experience pioneer life at Harmony Hill.

They get to You throw them out in the woods and say good luck. Oh, well, we have eight different stations where the children can try and experience new things. So everything

from grinding corn, to making butter,

to

the toys that were pioneer

toys that were available.

They also get to do some

surveying.

Have a chain and

a compass,

And all of the children take home a compass when they're done. That's part of learning some of the skills

that we're teaching when they're

here at Pioneer Days. It's incredible to think how they used to survey. I studied geology in college. I

wouldn't necessarily call it surveying, but it's called What kind of compass is it?

It's a specific kind of geology compass

that can do a whole lot of things. Brenton. Brenton Compass, I think that's what it's called. They're very expensive. I'd love one. But

it's incredible what you can do with a compass. And even knowing your paces,

knowing

how far your stride is,

you can map out

accurately things. It just always amazed me how they did that back in the day, without GPS and computers and you know, satellite maps and things like that. And you have to remember, there were trees everywhere. Yeah. This was a forest. Yeah. So An old forest too. Like, a dangerous

forest. I mean, I I don't think there were grizzlies, but there were certainly bears and Absolutely. Elements.

If you get out

in East Fork right now, like you get turned around and you can't get back to your car and you're there for the night,

that could be a bad night for you. I mean,

it's just rugged land. I mean, now we've got cities and things like that, but

it just always impresses me.

Guess you just call it bravery and sheer will

that people came here and started surveying and breaking land up and cutting trees down and making stuff. It's fascinating.

So we're working with all of the other museums in Claremont County on something called

Claremont County Museum

Passport.

Have you heard of this? I have not. I am so excited about this. You know, I feel bad. When I interviewed Jeff Blum,

he might've mentioned this. That's okay. He he did probably. But

I can talk about it a little bit more if you'd Please do. Because there's I've I've been trying to get

different historical societies and I was able to get the Bethel Historical Society. I have a list of all of them for you. Would you like me to email that I would to love that because I would love to talk to everybody at historical societies.

I can do that. And I don't know anything about the other historical society museums. So,

don't want it to sound like

I'm being disparaging against them, but the Bethel Museum,

they have done a really good job. In Middletown, we had a canal museum because the Erie Canal went through Middletown.

It was an okay museum. You'd go in and you'd see things. And that's kind of what I was expecting at Bethel. But no,

the way they've arranged things is really, really nice. They've taken great care of all this stuff. Judy Adams is wonderful. Yeah. And Susan. Susan is Susan cracked me up. She's she's a fun lady.

So always in Claremont County, there have been all of these individual museums. Yeah. Like the Bethel Museum or the Shiloh Lock on the river

or

the Loveland Historical Society,

the Monroe Township Historical Society. Didn't even know that existed. Exactly.

And then,

each of the museum Owensville's museum.

I haven't been I

drive past it when I drop my daughter off to school.

And every time I drive past, I go, oh, I gotta get in touch with her. There's a Victorian Christmas walk there this weekend. From three to eight, you need to take her. I

will. Oh, man. There's just so many Christmas events, and I wanna do all of them.

So this was kind of interesting. I'm I'm really glad we're getting a chance to talk about this because

every little museum

was just kind of focused on its own

mission and its own area and preserving the history in that village. Mhmm.

We all got together for the first time ever. That's awesome.

And one of the things that we decided we wanted to do was to work together and create

a tour.

But we decided that maybe the best way to do a tour, because

it's Cumberland County is big. It's would a big take more than one day to do this. Right? So

we created a passport so people can go and travel from one museum to another

based on, okay, it's a Wednesday.

This museum is open today from three to other thing. They all have different because it's Volunteers.

All volunteers. So

it's not like these things are open nine to five Monday through Friday. No. Nor have a paid staff that can help either.

So

we met together. We started as a group.

And

the mission was to create a passport with information about each of the museums

and to do this as a way to celebrate America two fifty. That's awesome. So for an entire year, you can pick up a

passport

and you can pick up one right here at the Batavia Library. I'll be doing that before I leave. The Genealogical

Society meets here, so they are one of the locations on So

the

it's been really a wonderful experience working together because we have found that we have resources that we can share.

One museum had an extra rope bed. We don't have a rope bed. They wanted to get rid of it. We're like, Oh my gosh, yes, absolutely we And need a rope

then

as

the museums work together more, we can do more things collectively to help each other. Well, history too.

There's a broad history

that all of these townships and carriages, all of us And

then it kind of gets more and more specific to your region. So that's really awesome that you guys did that. One of the things we found that surprised all of us is that we were all about seven miles from each other. Really? And we started thinking about that. And the reason these villages were about seven miles from each other is that's how far you could ride a horse,

eat or do whatever your errand was, whatever you needed to do in that town, and then drive back home before or get back home before dark, not drive. Yeah. Get on your horse and get back home before dark. Because that would have been a problem if it was dark and you're trying to get home on a horse. So when we looked at all these museums and realized,

oh my gosh, you know, this is this is how Clermont County

and this is how all of these museums and all of these villages came to be. Mhmm.

Why didn't we ever think of that before?

That seems pretty

Sometimes it just takes everybody getting together to like have that light bulb go off.

So we're super excited about this.

There are a lot of ways anybody can be a part of this. You can go to any of the locations and discover Claremont

for

America two fifty has this passport electronically

on the website. Nice.

But you can also pick up one at any of the locations at any of the museums that are participating.

There are going to be four days next year that are open house

for all of the museums.

Every one of the museums is going to be open that day. It's nice you coordinate that too. We are coordinating that. So from ten to four on those four days.

And the first date is January 3. Okay.

So right after the first of the year,

you can go to all of these museums.

Any in the passport will be open that day.

And so quarterly throughout the year, we're gonna have special Clermont County open open

open house, if you will, open doors for all of the museums. So we'll all be open those days.

This is an unfair question.

I'm gonna preface this, but do you have a favorite museum? Well, of course, the one I'm at. Harmony

Hill.

Well, and Harmony Hill is kind of,

like,

buying one and getting one free because

Harmony Hill Museum has been housing the Clermont County Historic Society in our building,

for over a decade.

And,

we love having them in our building.

So when you come to

Harmony Hill, you can also just step next door to the historic society and get two stamps So you get twofer. You get a twofer. That's nice. Now what happens if I get all my stamps? Do I get a cool hat?

I'm really angling for a cool hat here. Oh my gosh. Okay. We'll figure it out for you.

We'll get you a hat. A big one too. Actually, Harmony Hill has very cool hats. Need to come visit. Will. Yeah. We have cool hats.

So,

you know, I've really I don't know if this is on the record or off the record, but I really hope that

this is the catalyst for us doing even bigger and broader things as a group of museums in Claremont County.

I mean, I foresee this being,

an opportunity for

perhaps all of us using the same insurance company because we all have to have insurance for our Yeah. Priceless

Historical

objects. Yeah. We also

all need some of the same basic security for our buildings. Maybe we all work with one Claremont County security

company. Collectively, you'll probably get a better deal. Exactly.

And

I do like the whole idea

one of the things we always try to do is if something

is historic and it's brought to us, but it's really not the history of Williamsburg,

it's the history of Goshen,

We have a relationship where we can pick up the phone and say,

we have this.

It really belongs in your museum.

Would you like to come get this? Well, the ladies at Bethel were even saying, even the stuff from Bethel, people just bring boxes of things. They do. And you don't wanna turn them away.

They'd said that they'd just sit in their basement or storage. It's just photographs

and just tons of things.

And sadly,

some people

don't value that history and they don't know what to do with it. If you really don't know what to do with it, please bring it to a museum.

Do not put it in They trash loved getting it. It's just,

what do you do with all this stuff? I think they the cases of like

pens and stuff that insurance companies would give away back in the day. And it's all really cool.

That's

kind of one of the weird things about history is at some point you have to make the determination of what's history and what isn't.

Husband, who's a board member at Harmony Hill,

always laughs because we must have 20 different sewing machines.

And he's like, Liz, I love sewing machines. But do we really need to have 20 different sewing machines here at Harmony Hill?

So at some point,

we make decisions about what we should display and what can be in storage and

we think is important.

You know, the nice thing about a museum too is that you have all of these different options of things that you can showcase and share and tell your stories in different ways.

So,

know, gives us a lot of

we should maybe just have a sewing machine.

A sewing machine museum? Yeah. Just a museum for sewing machines. So as America

two fifty approaches, this is a great way to find history in your own backyard. Find out about things you didn't know about Well, right Claremont Scott

I know Butler, because I keep saying it, but I grew up in Middletown. I know Butler County has a good history. All of America has interesting history.

But there is something about Claremont County with

starting with the Revolutionary War land grants and then moving into the Civil War with the Underground Railroad and Grant.

It just and even I talked to Gary Knepp, who I actually need to talk to again.

Even up into the Korean War and World War I, we talked a lot about vets and men that went over there for those wars.

There's just a really deep, rich history

all the way back to

the

late seventeen hundreds. It's an incredible place for history.

And then, of course, we have more underground railroad sites here in Claremont County than anywhere else in the country. Yeah. That's crazy.

I'm actually gonna be talking to Greg again in

January.

But one of the craziest things he talked about was how because

there's so many underground railroad sites and it's easy to think that everybody in Claremont County was an abolitionist and we're all for freeing the slaves.

We live right next to Kentucky.

That clearly wasn't the case.

And people would rent

slaves to go across the river. I never even thought of a practice like that.

That's so wild that you could do that.

I don't know. It blew my mind when he talked about that, that people were literally rent. And then when they would rent the slaves, they'd be walking down the road and somebody would be like, hey, keep walking a little bit and we'll get you out of here.

Yeah. In Williamsburg, we have

two homes next to each other that were both

conductors in the underground railroad,

Boss Huber and

Doctor Pease. And

together,

they

helped more than 500 people to That's incredible. That's absolutely incredible.

Mean, think about

I don't know. It's just you think about

somebody coming here and it's all woods and carving out a life in the woods, and then the courage it would take

to help these people. Because I'm sure it was illegal. If you got caught, you'd be in huge trouble.

Don't It think they'd hang against the law. Yeah. It might be frontier justice. Even if it wasn't legal to hang you, they still might for helping people get to freedom.

It just took a lot of courage. And honestly, it seems like there are just, to this day, courageous

people in Claremont.

All the people I talk to, they seem to have a bit of an independent streak, I guess I'd say, if that makes sense.

Kind of a willingness to

thumb their nose at authority.

That's how I'd describe it, I suppose, which is probably why my wife and I like it here.

We're kind of those people.

That's good.

Oh, let me check because I know

Yes, we only have three more minutes. So, this is a perfect place, I think, to wrap it up.

But I want to give you the floor so you can talk about the Garden Club or

Harmony Hill Museum or whatever you'd like to talk about. Really, I think I just want to talk about volunteerism.

I do a lot of volunteer work for many

different organizations.

And some of them I'm really drawn to because of my personal interests like the garden club. And

others I just feel are important to the community.

I'm working with June and Old Williamsburg,

which is

going to be an America two fifty event too in the village.

And we're going to

are you familiar with that?

America two fifty. America two fifty? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. June in Old Williamsburg. Oh, no. I'm not with that. No. It's an

it's an event that is the community event for the year in the summer

in June. And of course, it focuses on

children.

There

are lots of rides and

crafts and food booths and lots of things

for families to do together. So it's really wonderful.

And it culminates with fireworks

on Saturday night. Nice. On Friday, there's a parade that starts at the high school and lots of,

fire trucks and

lots of different floats

throughout throughout

for businesses throughout the village that come through.

And it's just a fun event.

The money really just goes back into the account for the next year and the next fireworks and what we And do

this year for America Two Fifty,

there'll be a picnic in the community park on the Sunday following June in Old Williamsburg.

And

churches will be providing all

of the

side dishes,

And

the mayor and the village council will be doing the grilling, so hamburgers,

hot dogs,

and of course,

a dessert to finish the evening,

whether it's cake or ice cream. It's gonna be June, so it'll be hot. So maybe ice cream's the best solution for that. Yeah.

But, again,

just a way for the village to come together to celebrate America two fifty and to do something that's

that's just fun and grassroots.

It doesn't have to be

something that's plastic

or

I don't know, fake.

Yeah. I was about to I was about to say something real. Yeah. But

just something for families

to do together,

all ages,

all

different kind of interests

to celebrate America two fifty in in the village. Well, you know, we're in our phones and computers so much. It was a couple weekends ago. We took our kids to the park, and we had just had a nice day of just being out and about.

And you don't realize how much I work on a computer. I've got my phone all the time.

Doing something like that real is just

the reward you get from it is incredible.

And I just think the impact of what a volunteer can do to help their community

is not given as much

focus as it should.

I think all of us should be volunteers.

There are so many opportunities to help improve our communities,

to go out into the world every day and do something that's good.

It can be something small. It doesn't have to be

joining a club or joining an organization. I was about to say, that's kind of the nice thing about volunteering is if there's nothing you want to volunteer for, just go do something. Exactly. Every day,

just go do something good in the world.

Well, honestly, I think that's a good way to wrap it up.

Unless there's anything else you'd like to say.

I can't think of anything. Okay. Well, then I'm gonna call this a successful podcast and thank you so much for doing this. You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Well, thank you again to Liz for sitting down with us. Like I said in the intro, enjoyed the conversation and we'll definitely have to try to get her back on or other people from the garden club just to talk about

gardening. It sounds like there's some pretty knowledgeable people that are part of

that organization. So thank you, Liz, and, and we hope you have you'll come back on.

Alright. Let's talk about events. First up, we have a winter solstice celebration on December 19 at 5PM Sycamore Park. It is an annual winter solstice festival host hosted by the park district to celebrate the longest night of the year. Families can enjoy cozy winter crafts, a glowing nutcracker trail, hot drinks,

and more, and a free all ages evening of festive outdoor fun. You don't need to register, but you should I think you should dress warmly. I don't know. It's this Ohio weather. I think it's supposed to be, like, 50 degrees soon or something. I don't know.

But if it's cold, it's outdoors, so you should dress warmly for that.

Next, we have the natural wreath making workshop on December 20 from one to 2PM at Klingman Park. This is a hands on workshop where participants create their own holiday wreath using foraged natural materials provided by park staff. It is free and open to all edges ages,

but you do need to register

because they need to know how much, you know, stuff they need.

It's a great family craft activity activity to celebrate

the season in nature.

Next is Milford Community Fire Department Santa Sunday on December 21 from one to 6PM,

the city of Milford. This is a sixty seven year tradition in Milford.

Santa Claus, escorted by the Milford Community Fire Department,

will tour through the city's neighborhoods on a fire engine to spread holiday cheer. Residents can step outside to wave at Santa as he passes by with lights and sirens. This annual Santa ride is free, and the route covers all areas of the city between one and 6PM.

Next is Union Township Santa neighborhood tour on December 23. This is gonna be all day starting in the morning,

and it will go through various Union Township neighborhoods.

Santa Claus will be escorted man, Santa's busy. Santa Claus will be escorted by Union Township's fire and police departments

on a festive tour through local streets. Santa will wave to res residents and hand out candy canes as he visits neighborhoods, daycares, and other spots around the township.

This is a free event,

and if you listen for the sirens,

you can come outside to see Santa as he passes by.

Next up, there's gonna be some live music, the great blur at Little Miami Brewing on December 27 at 07:30PM.

It's going to be a high energy post Christmas live rock music show featuring local band, the great blur. Enjoy craft beer and free live music as the brewery's tap room turns into a lively venue for this one night performance.

All ages are welcome and there is no cover charge.

So that's all we got for events. Pretty short, probably because of Christmas. And a quick note on events, I do the best I can to find as many as I can, and I know I don't get all of them. So if you have an event or you know of an event you'd like people to know about, just send an email.

I can't promise that I will get all of the events out there because I don't wanna turn this into just an event podcast, but I will do my level best.

Alright.

Moving on to value for value.

Like I said in the intro, we're value for value podcast. What that means is you listen to the show

and you decide what the show is worth, And then you give back in the form of time, talent, or treasure.

For time and talent, like I said in the beginning, just tell people about the show. Getting the word out there and telling people you get value from this will really, really help us out.

And for treasure,

don't forget we got that holiday special. $25 donation will get you a special mention and a brief holiday message. $200 and above will get you an executive producer credit, which, again, I will always vouch for that, and a full note that I will leave that I will read on air.

And like I've always said, any dollar amount is greatly appreciated. If the show's worth a dollar to you, that's great.

Thank you so much.

And as always, you can connect with us on Facebook, Let's Talk Clairmont podcast, on Instagram at Let's Talk Clairmont. And we got the newsletter. Go to the website. Click the newsletter tab.

Put your email in there, and we're only gonna email you once a week when a new show comes out. And like I said, we're gonna we're try to do some interesting things with that newsletter. So sign up for that. And

you can see all the interesting things we try, the stuff that works and the stuff like that crossword puzzle that took a ton of time to do.

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And, of course, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever it is you use for podcasts.

It helps the show out a lot, but it also helps you out because you'll be notified anytime a new show goes live. And if you wanna just say hi or give us a boots on the ground report, anything you want, info@let'stalkclairmont.com.

Alright. Well, that is all I've got for you today. Thank you so much for listening and Merry Christmas,

and we will see you after the holidays.