November 2016

It's already mid-November and I don't know where the time has gone..... the weather is still pleasant, no freezes yet and daytime temperatures have been ranging from 60 to 80 degrees.  I've been harvesting tomatoes both from our own garden and from the Community Garden, which I give away.  I planted some sweet potato slips kind of late in the year, but since the weather has held up we are hoping that we are able to harvest at least a few.  I just saw an episode of the OSU Oklahoma Gardening show on Saturday and they said the end of October is about the right time to harvest.  Next year I plan on getting the slips in the ground a month earlier.  This year it was a fluke -- I happened to have some sweet potatoes in the kitchen that looked like they were trying to grow "roots" on their eyes, so I cut those eyes off, put them in water, and sure enough they grew roots and voila, I had sweet potato slips to plant!  I took a chance and got them in the ground and they have survived.  We aren't supposed to get a freeze until the end of next week (Nov. 20 maybe), so I'll be checking to see if there is anything to harvest. 
 
We started the month off with a BANG, providing a venue for a pre-wedding pre-rehearsal dinner get-together on the patio with a wood-fired pizza dinner for 22 people who gathered here from all corners of the US - Okeene, Iowa, OKC, New Mexico, and some from Watonga.  We were honored to be able to participate in the festivities for this wonderful group of people, and made new friends to boot.  The party went on till all hours..... no names or other details (what happens at the Retreat stays at the Retreat!)


Then on the first weekend of November we had returning guests, a father and his two sons who come out to this area for a family reunion every year and spend time mountain biking at Roman Nose State Park.  This is the fourth year they have come to stay at our place, but alas one of the boys was unable to come due to the loss of a family member.  They are always great guests and bring homemade beer to share.  I made a new, special recipe for breakfast for them to  try.......


The acorns have been falling for over a month, and the leaves are starting to change color and drop to the ground. 

October 30, 2016

Dear friends,
If you've visited the Retreat in the past year, please go to www.yelp.com and write a review! Thanks!


 I start my morning with the Lord's prayer and quiet meditation. Sometimes we have to look deep inside ourselves to find strength and comfort in dealing with the challenges of life.  Our philosophy is to keep on working, keep smiling, keep on hoping, keep on praying, and we know everything is going to be OK in the end.  We appreciate the blessings in our life and the opportunities we have to share those blessings.


The Retreat was booked up for the weekend of October 14-15, some  guests here for the cheese festival, some who just came out for a getaway weekend.  The weather was very nice other than a strong wind. For breakfast I made a frittata with a layer of hash brown potatos, eggs, sliced fresh tomatos, a light layer of cheddar cheese, garnished with fresh rosemary. Bacon on the side and fruit. We're still getting cherry tomatos from the house garden plants, basil, rosemary, and arugula. 


I spent that Friday morning in town and "interviewed" some of the vendors and some of the crowd, ate a smoked pork sandwich, and ran into several couples who had previously stayed with us at some point during the year.  You can take the word "wine" out of the name of the Watonga Cheese & Wine festival but that doesn't change the fact that Oklahoma wineries bring a huge crowd to the festival. What goes better with cheese (other than chocolate -- ah ah, there's an idea for a booth for next year)! On Saturday I worked the fundraiser booth for the Kiwanis Club, selling cheese.  This year the festival was spread out, with different activities at different locations other than Main Street, so I didn't have the chance to go to see quite a bit of the activities.   


This past week I decided to use some of the cherry tomatoes from the community garden for our dinner.  We've had a good crop and  I've given away two baskets of tomatoes so far.  We have some sweet potatoes planted in the beds there, and some okra, which is producing in spite of the late start.  Next year we'll get started  planting in the spring and hopefully have more young people come out to garden.  So, I used the cherry tomatoes, basil from our home garden, a little chopped rosemary, cubed mozarella cheese, garlic, a little pepper, some snips of green onion from my window "garden".  A splash of balsamic vinegar and some extra virgin olive oil, and voila, a salad to go with the spaghetti squash Drew made for dinner one evening.   We are blessed by the bounty of God's nature.


Our next house concert is Dan Martin, from Tulsa OK, on December 7.  I booked him to play at the cheese festival a couple of years ago, when I was in charge of entertainment for the festival, and we are excited to have him come out and play at our place.  We are currently asking for donations to Phoenix Circle Foundation so that we can continue bringing musicians out here (SEND MONEY PLEASE!!  See the Phoenix Circle Foundation facebook page).  This past week Andy and I went to OKC for an evening of networking with musicians and artists, and we toured the 21C Museum art gallery.  We made lots of contacts for future House Concerts, and got some ideas for our art gallery and studio space Andy and Drew continue to work on. 


Now it is Halloween.  The kids decorated the house and we plan on spending the evening reading  "scary" stories out loud. 


As for movies for the holiday, forget Nightmare on Elm St. and the Exorcist. Here is my list of creepy, scary movies:
Stir of Echoes (with Kevin Bacon)
Frailty (with Matthew McConnehey)
 Jennifer Eight (with Uma Thurman)
Suspect Zero (with Ben Kingsley )
Primal Fear (with Edward Norton and Richard Gere)
Seven (Brad Pitt)
The Cell (Jennifer Lopez)
The Gift (with Cate Blanchett)
The Skeleton Key (Kate Hudson)
and of course, Rosemary's Baby.  


HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  
/Linda

October House Concert

Wed. Oct 12.  My, how the time is flying by!
On Friday, I worked at the Whirlwind Winery in the afternoon.  It was a quiet day and I listened to the Glenn Roth CD "Welcome Home” while I got caught up on some writing.   

Thursday, Oct. 6,  was a busy day -- cleaning house, doing laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, and getting ready for the House Concert with Merry Ellen Kirk, Ruth Acuff, and Drew Lance.  Everybody pitched in – Jenna offered to make a beet, quinoa, and spinach salad for dinner; Drew made hummus; we had cheese curds, pate, and dark chocolate with wine and champagne. The B&B and events we host for Phoenix Circle Foundation take all of our efforts, working together. 

The Chaparral Retreat was the first stop on the second leg of Merry Ellen and Ruth's "EARTH ANGEL" tour.   

           

One of our friends from Tulsa drove in for the concert.  I promoted the show via multiple venues: flyers posted locally in windows of businesses, and  posters distributed to  shops in Weatherford, Canton, Geary, and Kingfisher, and at the Student Union, University Press, and Music Dept. at SWOSU.  I set up a facebook EVENT and posted on all of my facebook pages (my personal page, Oklahoma House Concerts, Phoenix Circle Foundation, Blaine County Community Events, Red Carpet Country Tourism page) and shared with all of the groups I am a member of.  We promoted on the Chaparral Retreat website, TravelOK, and the KOSU radio events calendar.  I sent out email invitations.  The week before the show, I sent in a press release to the local newspaper -- since Phoenix Circle Foundation is a nonprofit AND we pay for a weekly ad in the paper, I had asked that they print a listing in their “What’s Happening” section.  Sadly, the newspaper has not printed anything about the House Concerts sponsored by Phoenix Circle Foundation.  We do, however, receive a lot of response to our social media posts.  

Even though it had been a beautiful day on Thursday, we decided to set up indoors for the concert.  It had rained the night before and the forecast for rain on Thursday night was uncertain.  As it turned out, it did not rain until the late evening.  The audience was small but that just made for a more intimate evening.  We did have one new visitor and he was excited to learn about all that we are doing in the community.  Everything works out as it is supposed to be! 

Though Merry Ellen Kirk has played here before, and I knew her music to be fresh and beautiful, I did not know what to expect from a harpist.   Ruth Acuff's  songwriting, storytelling, her voice, and the way she was able to transport me to another plane with her fingers on the strings of the instrument was not like anything else I have ever experienced!  Merry Ellen's voice and songwriting are like fairy dust .... Drew's percussion work perfectly complimented both singers' music.   Our time together and conversation after the concert made it a magical evening.  I didn’t want to go to bed!

Before the musicians packed up for their trip to Tulsa on Friday morning, we all took a walk through the woods, checked on the chickens, and “toured” Drew and Jenna’s building project.  The air was chilly but it was sunny.  Autumn keeps threatening to begin, but we’ve had temperatures this past week as high as 90 degrees and overnight lows as low as 45.  On Thursday it was 66 degrees in the morning; on Friday morning it was 50 degrees.  We all needed sweaters for our morning trek.   The trio planned to go to Roman Nose State Park before leaving the area.

After breakfast on Friday morning, Andy and our friend from Tulsa took off for Dallas, to go to the Texas/OU game on Saturday.   [AND OU WON!!]  The TX/OU game has always been on the second weekend of October, the same weekend as the Watonga Cheese Festival,  but this year the Festival was moved to the weekend of Oct 14-15.   That actually works out better for us and our business.  In past years when Andy and I were involved with helping run the Cheese Festival, we devoted time not only before the festival, but from Thursday to Sunday we were in town from 9:00 am until 7:00 pm setting up, making sure everything ran smoothly, and then cleaning up; we were not able to tend to B&;B guests and ended up turning down business during that weekend.  Last year Andy went to the game in Dallas and I stayed here, and we did have house guests.  This year, since the Festival is a week later, we have a full house booked and Andy will be home to help. 


This week is time to do some cleanup outdoors - rake some leaves, trim some overgrowth, sweep and pick up some of the billions of acorns that have already fallen. 

HAVE A GREAT DAY! 

Update for friends

I've been handwriting in my journal daily over the past couple of months as we've gone through many changes this summer.  The past month has been especially difficult but I've come to terms with it all and we are moving forward. We've had lots of guests at the B&B and are booked full for the upcoming Cheese Festival.

I turned in my resignation as church secretary and am now focusing on all the projects we've started at our house and in town.   Andy and Drew have been working on the arts building.  We hosted a house concert with Glenn Roth, a finger style guitarist from Connecticut, on Sept. 17.  It was a rainy day so we didn't have a lot of people come out, but those that did got to experience a very special show.  Glenn is a great musician and we were blessed to have him come out here.  One of the benefits of holding the house concerts is that we get to meet some really good people and make new friends from all over the country, not only the musicians but audience members too.  We've been promoting  the house concerts at the SWOSU campus and shops in Weatherford, as well as in OKC and suburbs.  On the evening of Glenn's show, Gentry Counce, an OKC musician, and her boyfriend came out to see Glenn perform.  While we were sitting around visiting after Glenn played, Gentry got out her guitar and graced us with a couple of songs.  She's a facebook friend and we are glad to be able to spread the word about where she is playing. 

It's been a bad allergy season and I got really congested in mid-September. That congestion turned into bronchitis and I ended up taking an antibiotic.  That was hard on my system and when it was all said and done, I was out of commission for more about three weeks.  All is well now.   

/Linda

GLENN ROTH performing tonight

https://youtu.be/KzDkABYkBIk

Click on the above link for a sample of some fine guitar work by GLENN ROTH. 

Glenn will be at the Chaparral Retreat (Hwy 8A, 1 mile from Roman Nose State Park near Watonga, OK) for a House Concert this evening, Saturday, Sept. 17, at 6:00 pm. Sponsored by Phoenix Circle Foundation, the concert is FREE; tips are welcome and appreciated. It is BYO beverage, snack, lawnchair or blanket. Come out for a unique experience in rural OK under a canopy of native oak trees.

Glenn is a fingerstyle guitarist, his thumb riding the bassline and the melody driving all. His compositions suggest multiple guitars, but it’s really just one guy, ten flying fingers, one instrument. All instrumental, Glenn’s songs suggest moods and narratives that compel the listener to fill in the details.

Glenn's usual workspace is the vaulted splendor of Grand Central Terminal or the tunnels and platforms of the New York City subway system. A literal “underground” sensation, Glenn is a licensed performer in the MTA’s “Music under New York” program, playing for the most distracted and demanding audience in the world: legions of workers rushing to jobs throughout the Big Apple. And his fingers work magic, creating a soundscape of compelling melodies that invite them to leave the city rush behind on an aural escape.

Glenn plays regularly throughout the northeast and tours nationally & internationally to bring his music to new fans and locales.

The Chaparral Retreat is the ONLY place in Oklahoma Glenn is playing on his current tour. Come out and SUPPORT LIVE MUSIC.  As always, donations to Phoenix Circle Foundation allow us to continue to bring this kind of arts program and more to rural Oklahoma.  Thanks for your support!

[Linda Barrett, Ed.]

CATCHING UP -UPCOMING HOUSE CONCERTS

Sept. 5, 2016  Monday  Labor Day

 In spite of this weekend being a traditional "holiday", many have been laboring with end-of-summer chores.  Drew and Jenna and Andy all went out before the break of day to help our local vintners, Brad and Don, and other volunteers to harvest grapes out near Fay OK. They then bring the buckets of grapes to the winery building in town and go through the crush and press process to get the juice for future wines.  It is a wonderful agri-tourism activity, with people coming from Edmond, other suburbs of OKC, and as far away as Dallas to help.  Brad's wife cooks and sets out a wonderful lunch for the workers. They are harvesting again this morning to try to get the last of the grapes off the vine, so it will be another busy day.

There were family reunions and gatherings all during the month of August in the area.  Motels were full, the Lodge and campsites at  Roman Nose  State Park were all filled, and Chaparral Retreat & Guesthouse B&B had a full house.  The weather has been beautiful, especially over Labor Day weekend.  There were more boats on Canton Lake than I have seen out there in several years, and the beach was packed. We took friends out to the Overlook restaurant on the lake -- they serve really good hamburgers and the best onion rings I think I've ever had.


This was a perfect weekend to attract tourists to our area.  Last year I got elected to the board of directors of a state tourism organization, to represent Blaine County,  in the hopes that I could help give Watonga some exposure and let the town "leaders" see how tourism can work for the city as an economic development tool.  After eight years here, I've learned that there are thousands of people who come to our area but less than one percent of them know that there is anything to do in the nearby town or anything other than the State Park.  We are still waiting for the city of Watonga and the Chamber of Commerce to realize this.  Actually Andy and I aren't "waiting" anymore; we've accepted that the town itself isn't really interested in tourism dollars.  So we do what we can to give visitors something to do -- and believe me, there are lots of visitors that come here during the spring, summer, and fall.  Our concert series, called OKLAHOMA HOUSE CONCERTS, has grown this past year and we're becoming known as a unique venue for live musicians from all over the country.  We have so much fun with our guests and one-day visitors and people who come out for the music and art activities.  [I'm going to stop my fall down the rabbit hole now .... ]

 These concerts are  FREE -- we  provide lodging and meals to the artist, and accept donations to the PHOENIX CIRCLE FOUNDATION (a 501(c)(3) charitable and educational nonprofit organization to be able to bring music and arts education programs to rural Oklahoma.  Of course, tips to the musician and CD sales help them as they journey across country to share their talents. 
The evening is BYO Beverage, snacks, lawn chair or blanket.   We guarantee you'll have a special experience.  More information is available on our facebook page or the Retreat's website, www.chaparralbb.com.  We also promote these events at watonganews.blogspot.com and on KOSU Community Calendar.

The Blaine County Free Fair was held last the last weekend in August.  Winners in the numerous categories will be in the Watonga Republican.  On a personal note, I won ribbons on two photographs I submitted (below).  I encourage all Blaine County residents to start thinking about what they can contribute to the Blaine County Fair for next year!! 

  (c) Linda Barrett 2016

(c) Linda Barrett 2016



 Merry Ellen Kirk and Ruth Acuff,  Oct. 6, time TBA

https://www.reverbnation.com/merryellenkirk

MUSIC FILLS THE AIR!

Out in the middle of rural NW Oklahoma, just one hour from Oklahoma City, the owners of the Chaparral Retreat & Guesthouse have started  a series of OKLAHOMA HOUSE CONCERTS that is quickly becoming a destination for musicians from all over the country!  Next month (Sept. 17), Mr. Glenn Roth will be stopping in to perform here following his appearance at the  Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield,KS  and before he heads to Rio Rancho, NM and Taos ,NM.  We are so fortunate to be able to provide a unique venue for musicians and an informal and beautiful setting for these concerts.
These concerts are  FREE -- the proprietors provide lodging and meals to the artist, and accept donations to the PHOENIX CIRCLE FOUNDATION (a 501(c)(3) charitable and educational nonprofit organization to be able to bring music and arts education programs to rural Oklahoma.  Of course, tips to the musician and CD sales help them as they journey across country to share their talents. 
The evening is BYO Beverage, snacks, lawn chair, and cameras.  We guarantee you'll have a special experience at an OKLAHOMA HOUSE CONCERT.   More information is available on our facebook page or the Retreat's website, www.chaparralbb.com.  We also promote these events at watonganews.blogspot.com and on KOSU Community Calendar.


On Oct.6, we are in for another special musical treat.

Do you see WATONGA OK on this tour list?
If you do, Share with your friends and hear some of their music on youtube, We are very fortunate to be attracting a variety of talent from all over the U.S. to come to our area.
OKLAHOMA HOUSE CONCERTS are informal gatherings at the Chaparral Retreat, near Roman Nose State Park. FREE concerts,BYOB in a beautiful setting. We provide lodging for the musicians and they give us a concert for tips and CD sales.

ASO, PLease click on one of the like, comment, or share buttons on one of our facebook pages to let us know you've seen this the post!  Each month we hear from at least a dozen people who say "I didn't know you were having a concert at your place."  We want to get the word out, so THANKS for your support and sharing!

(c) Linda Barrett [Ed.]