Josh Kilmer-Purcell's Blog, page 20

The Mercantile Flower Market

We re-set the flagship Mercantile in Sharon Springs, NY,  5 times per year—once for each season and then again during the holidays.

In honor of our collaboration with Mackenzie-Childs (you can read more about that here), the theme for Spring 2017 is Flower Market.

Take a look around:

 

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To get your LIMITED EDITION box set of the Mackenzie-Childs + Beekman 1802 collaboration, click here

How Good Neighbors Work Together

When Brent gets an idea in his head, it doesn’t stay there very long–he brings it to life.

One day last year he went to the mailbox at the end of the driveway at Beekman 1802 Farm and pulled out the latest catalog from Mackenzie-Childs.

Mackenzie-Childs was founded in 1991 when two free-spirited artists took over an old farm in Aurora, NY.  Much like Beekman 1802, they used the farm as a source of creative inspiration.  In 1995, the artists were re-purposing an old wardrobe cabinet and hand-painted a border along the top of alternating black and white squares.  This pattern ultimately morphed into the Courtly Check pattern that today is recognizable around the world.

Beekman 1802 is known around the world for the scents creatively inspired by our farm in Sharon Springs, NY.

Brent thought to himself: Why can’t these two companies based in upstate NY be good neighbors and collaborate on a project that can represent the amazing things that are dreamed up in upstate NY every day?

He sent an email to Rebecca Proctor, the creative director of Mackenzie-Childs.

“Our studio and main facility was once a dairy farm. In many ways we are still a farm; a farm where instead of producing milk, we grow art and beautiful things for your table. In this fundamental sense, we are farm to table,” she said.

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The first result of this creative collaboration is the Good Neighbor hand-painted enamelware caddy.

We created an exclusive Flower Market scent for our goat milk soap and hand-lotions and Mackenzie-Childs created an exclusive Courtly Check enamelware caddy so that the bottles sit prettily next to your sink.

As a bonus, the caddy is oven-safe and can eventually be used to make individual desserts. We created two new flower-inspired recipes to get you started: a lemon lavender poppyseed cake and a rosewater creme brulee.

Josh says: Our company has been built one neighbor at a time, and upstate NY will re-build itself by companies and organizations working together to support one another.

 

Beekman 1802 + Mackenzie Childs | Good Neighbors

 

To get your LIMITED EDITION gift boxed set, click here

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Garden Party 2017

 

 

Help us celebrate all the good things growing in Sharon Springs at the annual spring Garden Party Festival!

 

Hours:

All vendors will be set up and ready to greet you by 10:00am and will be open for business until 5pm on both Saturday and Sunday

Parking information: 

Parking is at the Sharon Springs Central School on the corner of State Route 10 and US 20 (just behind the Stewarts Station).  Shuttle buses will run on the half-hour throughout the day.  Additional parking available at Sunnycrest Orchard on US 10.  Shuttles are also available from this location. Street parking is discouraged on festival days for safety reasons.

 

Look what is new and exciting this year!  More Neighbors every year!

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-Saturday schedule-

9:30am-5:00pm

Chris Ottman will demonstrate how he creates his popular Cherry Valley Tincicles. Demonstrations all day in front of Cobbler and Company.

10:00am

Start browsing over 100 vendors selling seeds, plants, crafts and food

HIGH NOON at Chalybeate Park

Become an honorary citizen of Sharon Springs!  Mayor Doug Plummer will lead a “swearing in”  ceremony.  Line up to shake his hand and get your authentic certificate of citizenship

1:00pm-2:00pm

Meet Rebecca Proctor, the creative director of Mackenzie-Childs at the Mercantile. Brent, Josh, and Rebecca will autograph the LIMITED EDITION  MKC/Beekman 1802 enamelware caddy collaboration and talk about how our two upstate NY companies share so many similarities.

BONUS:  in honor of Garden Party, one person who attends this event will win a famous Mackenzie-Childs hand-painted tea kettle!

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All day:

Get a taste of summer!  Chef Lee at The American Hotel will be bringing in fresh lobsters from the coast of Massachusetts to make lobster rolls!  Get there early (the last two years they’ve sold out REALLY quickly).  Look for other great food vendors set up in Chalybeate Park with the picnic tables!

 

 

-Sunday schedule-

 

10:00am

Start browsing over 100 vendors selling seeds, plants, crafts and food

10:30-11:30

Have tea and scones with Sweet Paul!  Paul Lowe is the founder and editor of Sweet Paul magazine and one of the most creative people we’ve ever met. He’ll teach us a cute and quick Springtime craft project.

 

 

Check back here often as updates are made to the schedule of events right up until the last minute!

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The Sharon Springs Chatter

We’ve lobbied really hard for Garrison Keillor to give up life in Lake Wobegone and move to Sharon Springs, but thus far he has not answered our letters or returned our calls.

Sharon Springs has beautiful people and above-average children, too, so on to Plan B.

What is a small town village without a small town paper to keep track of what everyone is doing?

Nancy Pfau, the town historian, is now editor of our own little paper.

Each month you can check back here for a new issue and follow the lives of the real village people. If you pay a real visit, you may even want to submit a story idea of your own!

You may not live in small town, but at least you can pretend.

See below for the Spring 2017 Issue

 

Sharon Spring Chatter by Carlos Stewart on Scribd

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Just another Mud Season…

“Mud Season” is officially upon us. In fact, it’s raining right now as I type. Mud Season basically begins with the spring thaw, and ends once the grass & trees begin to bud and use up the excess moisture in the ground.

When we first moved in to Beekman 1802 Farm in 2007 it was the height of Mud Season. So while it might not be the favorite time of year for most of the locals, it will always hold a special place in our hearts. It’s kinda ugly…but it’s our ugly.

Take a walk with us around the farm today…but be sure to grab your umbrella…

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Spring Awakenings

In America, we are most familiar with the Spring celebrations of Easter and Passover, but nearly every religion and every culture has their celebration of the season of renewal.

Each Beekman 1802 Trip of a Lifetime is based on 6 talisman:  master, meander, taste, treat, give and grow.

The recent trip to India was scheduled to center around the Hindu celebration of Holi.

Holi (also called Holaka or Phagwa) is an annual festival celebrated on the day after the full moon in the Hindu month of Phalguna (early March). It celebrates Spring, commemorates various events in Hindu mythology and is time of disregarding social norms and indulging in general merrymaking.

Celebrated all over India since ancient times, originally, Holi was an agricultural festival celebrating the arrival of spring (similar to our Garden Party Festival in Sharon Springs which happens every Memorial Day Weekend.)

This aspect still plays a significant part in the festival in the form of the colored powders: Holi is a time when man and nature alike throw off the gloom of winter and rejoice in the colors and liveliness of spring.

Our group got to celebrate Holi with a royal family in India whose home served as the setting for the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Having experienced Holi, we can say that there’s really no holiday in North America that comes anywhere close to replicating the unbridled joy that comes from the “festival of colors”.  Smiles are contagious.

 

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You could participate in Holi when the Trip of a Lifetime returns to India in 2019.  Click here for the details!

(W)ishing (W)ell (W)ednesday #www

 

Putting a message in a bottle and tossing it out to sea.

Blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.

Tossing a coin into a bottomless well.

So many things that we do in life to move ourselves forward require blind leaps of faith.

Ten years ago we were two NYC guys who bought an empty farmhouse in upstate NY as a weekend getaway.

A local farmer–whom we all know now as Farmer John–wrote a note and put it in our mailbox.

He was losing the place where he was farming ,and as a last desperate effort to prevent from having to sell his beloved goat herd, he asked if he could bring them to Beekman Farm and use our barn and pastures.

He moved to the farm on April 1, 2007, and the rest is history.

But John was certainly no April Fool.

Unlike so many people, he realized that sometimes in order to realize your dreams you have to first put them out into the universe and then work along with the universe to make them happen.

Today,  Beekman 1802, the farm and company built around Farmer John’s goats, is the fastest growing lifestyle brand in America.

A lot can happen in 10 years.

In honor of our 10 years, of blind leaps of faith, and the rekindling of hope, we’re starting a new social media project called Wishing Well Wednesday (#www)

Each Wednesday we are going to post a picture about where we would like to be 10 years from now using the hashtag #www.  It might be something in our personal life, something for the business, or even something on our Bucket List.

We hope you’ll share all of your goals and aspirations with the universe, too.

Follow us on any Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat and Pinterest

@beekman1802boys

 

 

 

 

Weekend Project: headboard makeover

This bed is traditional in its shape and form: it is a federal-style bed with a mahogany finish, and the curves and arches are meant to be formal and fancy. Take this traditional bed and do something completely opposite, to make it fresh, fun, and useful in multiple locations. How opposite can you get from stiff and federal? Well, how about letting kids and adults write on the bed? Isn’t that fun? All you need is a few coats of paint and some chalk.

To keep the bed playful yet tasteful, use chalkboard paint only inside the inset of the headboard, where there were nice starting and stopping lines and keep the rest of the bed a shade that fits your room decor. Using a darker color keeps the bed a little bit more rich and still polished, but in a casual way.

 

For more tips and techniques on giving any furniture piece a makeover check out Furniture Makes the Room by Barb Blair.  Click here.

Rhubarb Vinegar

 

There are a thousand uses for fruity vinegars:  drizzle a bit on cooked or raw veggies along with a good olive oil as a light dressing; add a splash to any pan sauce to brighten up the flavors in the pan; stir the vinegar into club soda with maple or simple syrup to make a shrub. They also make a great host gift.

Rhubarb makes a beautiful vinegar. This recipe is created with strong and vibrant rhubarb in late spring. The stalk’s flavor is subtler early in the season, so you may want increase the quantity used.

For any fruit vinegar, the general ratio of ingredients is one part fruit to one part vinegar, but you can increase the measurements to account for the fruit’s flavor and

your taste. It’s important to strain fruit vinegars. The more fruit particles you extract from the vinegar, the longer it will keep that pure taste. Leftover particles will continue to break down, changing the taste, dulling the color, and shortening the shelf life.

 

This vinegar can be cooked down further with 1/4 cup brown sugar to make a tart glaze.

 

Ingredients:

2 cups rhubarb (from about 5 stalks)

2 cups white wine vinegar

 

 

Special Equipment:

1 large glass jar with airtight lid

2 half-pint bottles with airtight lids, sterilized

Cheesecloth or coffee filters

 

Instructions:

1. Clean the rhubarb. Chop off about ¼ inch of the tip of each stalk and cut the rhubarb into 1-inch pieces.

 

2. Combine the fruit and vinegar in a medium nonreactive pot over medium heat. Once it warms a bit, stir the mixture, pressing on the fruit a bit to help distribute

a little color into the vinegar. Bring to a low boil (the bubbles are tiny around the edge but moving vigorously) and boil 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool a few minutes.

 

 

3. Pour the still-warm vinegar into a large jar and store on a dark shelf 5 days.

 

4. Strain the fruit from the vinegar, discarding the fruit. If you’d like an evensmoother, refined vinegar, strain the vinegar through cheesecloth or a coffee filter to remove extra fruit particles. Funnel the vinegar into newly sterilized jars.

 

 

5. Store on a dark shelf and use up to 2 months.

 

For more great gift ideas for the foodie in your life, check out Food Gift Love by Maggie Battista.  Click here

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Anatomy of an Egg

 

Here we break down the egg to show you its primary components and how each of them contributes to the whole.

 

SHELL

Made up primarily of calcium carbonate, the egg’s outermost layer is porous, allowing both air and moisture to pass through. That means that over time, an egg will absorb odors and flavors and lose moisture. A super thin coating sheaths the shell to help prevent dust particles and bacteria from penetrating. Because eggshells are high in calcium and vitamin D, they can be crushed into a fine powder and added to homemade cosmetics for a topical application, or to smoothies or baked goods to enrich the diet.

 

INNER AND OUTER MEMBRANES

These thin sacs of transparent protein surround the albumen to protect the egg from bacterial infiltration and excessive loss of moisture—acting as the second line of defense after the shell. You can sometimes see them when you look at the inside of a freshly cracked shell. When eggs are boiled, these membranes become opaque and also quite sturdy, as they are partially made of keratin, the same protein component found in human hair.

 

AIR CELL

After an egg is laid, a small pocket of air forms between the inner and outer membrane at the broader end of the shell. The smaller this air cell is, the fresher the egg. That’s because as the egg ages, moisture lost through the shell is replaced with air.

 

CHALAZA

This thick, white, rope-like strand, which is affixed to both ends of the yolk and to the white, is most prominent in very fresh eggs, gradually fading as eggs age. The job of the chalaza is to keep the yolk centered. Once eggs are cooked, it blends into the albumen and yolk, becoming undetectable.

 

ALBUMEN

The white of the egg, the albumen is an important source of protein and vitamin B2. It is composed primarily of protein, with only traces of fat and no cholesterol. The tighter and thicker the albumen, the fresher the egg.

 

VITELLINE MEMBRANE

This thin membrane is similar to the inner and outer membranes, but it encases only the yolk, rather than the white and yolk. Very sturdy when an egg is fresh, it loses its strength as the egg ages.

 

GERMINAL DISK

This small, white spot on the surface of the yolk provides a channel to the center of the yolk to facilitate fertilization. If the egg has been fertilized, this spot is where the embryo will grow.

 

YOLK

The yolk is high in cholesterol and contains almost all of the fat in the egg. But it also carries almost as much protein as the white as well as several vitamins and minerals, among them vitamins A, D, B6, B12, K, calcium, phosphorus, and iron. The color of the yolk depends on the diet of the bird that laid the egg.

 

If you’ve started raising your own chickens, learn more about how to cook eggs every which way with The Perfect Egg by Teri Lyn Fisher and Jenny Park.  Click here

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