~Greetings from Colorful Vermont ~

October 4, 2008

Mother Nature is busy here in Vermont. Our Green Mountains are transformed into beautiful vistas of scarlets, oranges and golds. Right now the colors are at peak. For any of you who haven’t visited Vermont during foliage, you should add it to your list of places to see. It is really worth seeing it at least once in a lifetime. On our recent trip to Estes Park, CO, we enjoyed the yellow aspens and bugling elk, but we still love our Vermont maples.

Our balsam business continues to grow. I enjoy the friendships made with new customers and love to correspond! We keep a map and we have now shipped our balsam to over 30 states and into Canada. We decided to bring back the original balsam idea that I started with, the mug rugs. These are squares of fabric with balsam sandwiched inside, sold in sets of four. When a hot cup is set on one the warmth really releases the scent. New this year on our website, we're offering our beautiful tabletop Christmas "trees" and hanging holiday kissing balls. Both of these are made with fresh fragrant balsam boughs and come decorated. Either one is a perfect gift to sent to friends, family and yourself for the holidays. Tradition states that in 18th century England, if an eligible young lady received a kiss on the cheek under the kissing ball, marriage would soon follow. While this tradition has gone it is still a fun and festive symbol of times past.

My daughter, Aimee, now is my right hand woman, as she helps me sew the balsam items, catnip nappers and recycled sweater throws. She is very capable and talented, able to change gears in a flash and start right in on a new project I throw at her. She’s also been recruited to make holiday kissing balls and tabletop trees this year! When she is not busy stitching, her two boys, Darren (almost 7) and Andrew (2) keep her hopping. See her picture below.

Many fun and interesting publicity gigs continue to happen for Rich and me at VT Balsam. In May I went to a quilt seminar in Glens Falls, NY and met Alex Anderson, the former host of the TV show, "Simply Quilts." See the picture of her with our balsam on the slide show on our site. As I mentioned in the Spring newsletter, Thimbleberries used our loose balsam in her directions for sachets in her project book, "Christmas Punch". Fons and Porter did a nice product review in their summer magazine.

In June I received an email from a new magazine, called East Coast Home and Living. Our sachets were shown in this magazine, as part of featuring one unique item from each state on the East coast from Maine to Florida.

July was very interesting when I received an email from an employee at "Martha Stewart Living" magazine requesting that I ship overnight a bag of balsam for a photo shoot the next day in NYC! Of course I snapped right to it and called Fed Ex and away it went. It will be pictured and we’ll be listed in the resource section of MS Living Holiday Issue. It hits the stands on November 17th. “It’s a very good thing”, as Martha herself says.

A few customers have mentioned how they remember Stuart Little’s reference to the balsam pillow in the book by E.B. White. I didn’t remember it, but I went to our Hyde Park library and checked "Stuart Little" out and found the reference to it. Sure enough, there was the reference on Stuart's little pillow “for you I pine, for you I balsam”.

I have a bit of yankee humor, as we call it in this neck of the woods. Since we’re a two person business, Rich and I have come up with self appointed job titles for ourselves. Rich’s include Research and Development Director , Production Supervisor, Shipping Coordinator. He was a production supervisor for 25 years. I hoped it would wear off after retirement, but it hasn’t yet! He is also in charge of shipping, although he may be demoted after one episode of mixing up labels on two packages. Luckily, we caught the mix up before we sent 5 pounds of balsam to someone who ordered 18 pounds and vice versa. Again our Hyde Park post office came to the rescue before they went out the door. ,
My titles include: PR and Marketing Director, Sales and Service, Fabric Coordinator and even Head of Delivery.

In mid October I’ll be interviewed for the second time by Ron Wilson in Ohio. He hosts the talk radio show, "In the Garden with Ron Wilson" on Saturday mornings from 6:00-9:00 on XM Radio, channel 165. His show is also heard on many stations throughout the US. I’ve listened to his show for a long time and I emailed him about our balsam. He thought it was interesting and wanted me to talk with him about it last year. I told him I’d be way too nervous, but my husband probably could be talked into it. He said no, he wanted me. One Saturday all of a sudden I heard him mentioning Balsamsue on the air and he was telling the story of how I thought I’d be too nervous to talk with him. So, after that, I decided that I’d do it. Let me tell you, I was really nervous, but somehow I didn’t sound it on the air. Now I feel like an old pro at it! You can listen to a podcast of it on his site, if you'd like to hear it. He keeps it posted for about a month after.

We are busily harvesting and processing batches of balsam in a steady rhythm now and will be right up until Christmas. Balsam production is comparable to maple syrup production. To make a gallon of VT. maple syrup you start with 40 gallons of sap. The Balsam Production Supervisor here figures we trim 200 pounds of boughs to end up with 50 pounds of usable dried balsam. As we stand in the rural Vermont balsam forest, happily clipping away, we both think, aren't we luck to be able to do this and enjoy it so much!

Until next time, remember to
SLOW DOWN AND SMELL THE BALSAM!

Balsam Sue and Rich
www.vtbalsam.com
sue@vtbalsam.com