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| A LOCAL TREASURE |
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| SINCE 1891 |
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| FROM COW TO YOU |
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| HOP HORNBEAM FLOWER |
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| ...FLOWERS AND LEAVES |
Thursday, 8:00 AM. 68 degrees, wind WSW, light to moderate. The sky is overcast and it has been raining lightly with no measurable accumulation and the barometer predicts more rain. It is a cool, quiet, pleasant morning.
There are many good things about small town and country living, and one of the best things in the Bayfield environs is Tentzner’s Dairy, where we buy most of our milk and ice cream. It is a small dairy operation, selling most of their product at the farm. The prices are good due to low overhead, and the products absolutely delicious. Their milk brings back youthful farm memories of drinking fresh (unpasurized at the time) milk right from the spring fed coolers and fresh from the cows. The ice cream (6 flavors), also ice cream bars taste like expensive brands or better. Milk, sold in plastic bags, is $2.75 a gallon, ice cream $2.00 per quart for most flavors. Payment is cash and carry, the honor system. No sales person behind the counter. Write up your purchases on an envelope, put your money in and drop the envelope in a cash box. The farm dates to 1891, the dairy to 1920. Their milk is pasteurized and homogenized, and available in skim, 2% and 4% butterfat. Tetzner farm and dairy is located on Nevers Road, about a mile west of Hwy 13, and halfway between Washburn and Hwy 2. For more information visit their web site. We feel very fortunate to have this fine business in our community.
Ironwood, aka hop hornbeam, Ostrya virginiana, in the beech family, is a small to medium sized deciduous forest understory tree. It is blooming now, an unusual sight if one can catch it at all. The female flowers are a pendulous conelike structure that looks like a hop flower, and is creamy white and quite showy. The male catkins, borne on the same tree, are not as significant and I couldn’t reach one to photograph it. The fruit will develop as a nutlet inside each bladder-like portion of the flower. The common name ironwood refers to the extremely hard and tough wood, which burns well. The tree has a nice rounded shape if it has room to grow, and the brown scaley bark is interesting. It will grow in dense shade. I am going to try some as street trees.
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