Tag: 22932

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Blue Mountain Brewery Doubling Capacity

Thanks to Nelson County Life for the heads-up.

It’s been a busy week already for the folks at Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton. They have been in the process of offloading a new tank that will double their draft and bottled beer distribution in stores and restaurants. “We just recently got to the momentous mark of having our draft and bottled beer in over 100 restaurants and stores across Virginia. This new tank is going to help us double that within a year,” Mandi Smack, co-owner of BMB tells us.

I have made no secret about my appreciation for this beer; friends from around the state and country are jealous that this brewery is only 12 minutes from Downtown Crozet (and my house)!

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Pink Ribbon Polo at King Family Vineyards

It should be fun, particularly because the proceeds benefit the fight against cancer.:

Join us on June 13, 2009 for the Fifth Annual Pink Ribbon Polo Classic at King Family Vineyards in Crozet, Virginia.
The purpose of the event is to raise awareness and funds to benefit breast cancer care and research in our community.

Enjoy the world’s most exciting sport – at one of the most beautiful spots in Virginia. Come and see who takes home the Cup when Team King takes on Team Flow.

Schedule of Events:

* Match is on Saturday, June 13, 2009 at King Family Vineyards featuring Team Flow vs. Team King.
* Gates open at 10 a.m. with pre-game festivities and the Boutique Shops.
* 11 a.m. The Winery & Tasting Room open for tastings and sales. Enjoy the Segway demonstration on the field.
* 12:30 p.m. Stick and Ball Warm-Up
* 1:00 p.m. Match Begins
* All proceeds will benefit the American Cancer Society to assist in the fight against breast cancer.

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The Crozet Mudhouse – Coming Soon

The Mudhouse, coming soon to The Square in Crozet, aims to become Crozet’s “meeting place.” Many are familiar with the Mudhouse – the original location on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall and their “branch” locations in the Markets around town.

We are about to join the ranks of areas around Charlottesville boasting our own Mudhouse. Humbly boasting heart pine floors which were reclaimed from an old mill in Rome, Georgia that warm up the space, eventually there will be live music in this great historic building with “great bones” and a “great flow.”

From Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers, The Story of Success,

What Wolf began to realize was that the secret of Roseto wasn’t diet or exercise or genes or location. It had to be Roseto itself. As Bruhn and Wolf walked around the town, they figured out why. They looked at how the Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. They learned about the extended family clans that underlay the town’s social structure. …

Living a long life, the conventional wisdom at the time said, depended to a great extent on who we were — that is, our genes. it depended on the decisions we made — on what we chose to eat, and how much we chose to exercise, and how effectively we were treated by the medical system. No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.

That’s not a bad goal for a local coffee shop to have.

It will be a place to see neighbors and to experience “fluid social interaction, meet family, friends, colleagues” … and to enjoy a good cup of coffee. Or a snack. Or some live music.

The Daily Progress noted the coming coffee boom … and it’s about to start.

Every place needs spaces to help define what they are and John wants this Mudhouse space to be this place – the community place for Crozet. Personally, I am really looking forward to it.

Update 28 May 2009: A reader asked via email whether the Mudhouse would be smoke-free. John affirms that they have always been and always will be smoke free.

Part II of the Crozet coffee boom coming Tuesday.

Transcription:

Hi this is Jim Duncan and we’re here in the Mudhouse in Crozet. When I pulled up this morning on my bike I noticed you had the Outliers pages from Malcolm Gladwell’s book all on the outside of the Mudhouse and I’ll take a shot of that in just a minute. But I’m curious John, why did you put that out there?

John Lawrence: We put it out there because when I was first reading it, the point of the chapter is that the community that the people live in directly relates to the health, the physical, psychological, and emotional well-being of the people there and the connections that they make with each other. So that’s how we see Crozet and it just seemed like the perfect thing. That’s our hope for this coffee house and what it can mean to Crozet.

Jim Duncan: Cool! Thanks very much!

John Lawrence: Sure.

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Crozet Master Plan Revision

CROZET MASTER PLAN REVISION KICKOFF MEETING TOMORROW NIGHT (MAY 27)

Citizen Questionnaire available on line beginning May 27

Crozet residents are invited to a public meeting on Wednesday, May 27, at 7:00 pm at the Crozet United Methodist Church to kick off the five year revision of the Crozet Master Plan, which was adopted by the Board of Supervisors in December, 2004.

The meeting will focus on two objectives – to provide a community refresher on the current Crozet Master Plan and also to introduce and distribute a questionnaire sponsored by the Crozet Community Advisory Council to gather information from the Crozet community. The Crozet Community Questionnaire will be available online from May 27-June 12 at www.albemarle.org/crozet and at the Master Plan Refresher session as well as other locations around Crozet.

The master plan update is an opportunity to assess Crozet’s progress in achieving the goals set in the Master Plan adopted in 2004. As a Development Area in the county’s land use plan, Crozet is expected to continue to provide a place for growth to occur outside of the designated Rural Areas as part of the County’s overall growth management policy. Now at the five-year mark, it is time to determine what may or may not have developed as envisioned in the plan, given the experience of four plus years of the plan in action. The update is an opportunity to revisit and revise issues of concern from all perspectives.
Focus areas for the revision will be determined this summer based on public feedback, input from the Crozet Community Advisory Council and staff analysis and will be presented to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors for their review and comment this fall.

Lee P. Catlin
Community Relations Director
Albemarle County
401 McIntire Road
Charlottesville, VA 22901
(434) 296-5841 (office)
(434) 531-8092 (mobile)

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Crozet Park Open this Weekend

Get your pool passes now! Even better, they will be using a new saline-based chlorination system.

This year, the pool committee has already been busy making other improvements for their patrons. First and foremost, the pool’s water sanitation process has been completely converted. Rather than continuing to use a granulated chlorine injection process for water treatment, the pool has converted over to a new, improved, safer water treatment system called ChlorKing®. This system makes it no longer necessary to have staff handle hazardous and expensive chemicals. It reduces the amount of room needed to store sometimes large, heavy quantities of chlorine that are necessary to keep the water levels safe. It creates a natural antiseptic environment that prevents bacteria and algae from forming. Furthermore, there is the potential that the ChlorKing saline chlorination system could reduce our system running costs by up to 80% annually.

As an added perk, while chlorine exposure to humans is often harsh, this system will be so much kinder and gentler to our natural bodies. Potentially gone are the days of red, irritated eyes or itchy, dry skin, green hair for our fair haired swimmers or even bleached bathing suits and the water will feel soft, silky and more all natural than ever before. There will be no more of that chlorine taste or smell; however, you will find a slightly salty taste to the water from now on, which is normal with this system.

Continue reading “Crozet Park Open this Weekend”

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Letter from a Reader

Unfortunately, the garbage distributed throughout Crozet last night is not unique to Crozet – it was dropped off in Charlottesville a few years ago.

(did you know that the County Police have online crime reporting? I didn’t either)

This, from a concerned Crozet reader:

Good morning, all. I didn’t actually notice this trash in my driveway until another parent at the bus stop just mentioned it, but the white supremacist group, the Aryan Nation, tossed copies of their newsletter, the Aryan Alternative, in many of our driveways last night. Without evening opening it you can see the racist propaganda they’re trying to spread. Not something I want my children to find in the driveway! Not something I want to read, either.

While freedom of speech protects their right to distribute this filth, it does not protect them from littering! I called the county police, and they said that yes, because they tossed it in our driveways, we can report them for littering! Every single newspaper tossed in our driveways is a count of littering that can result in a fine. Since they distributed dozens of them, we can hit them where it hurts!!!

You can report them online in just a few minutes at
http://www.albemarle.org/policeonlinereporting/

I took a picture of the paper being in my driveway and for the time being am not going to throw it out in case the police wants it as evidence. I would encourage you to do the same if you can, because with proof, a fine will absolutely stick. Even if you already did throw it out, please report it.

Now unfortunately, if they want to do this again, they legally can put the paper in our newspaper slots or even tape them to our front doors (although I would argue this is trespassing), but if enough of us file a report, hopefully they’d discover that Crozet will not be friendly toward their presence here and will get the message to stay away.

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Help the Crozet Farmer’s Market

From a Crozet discussion board –

If you love supporting local food and farmers in Crozet, please consider helping out with the Crozet Market.

Shop the market from 8am-noon every Saturday at the gravel lot of Crozet United Methodist Church.

Be a vendor, once or every week!

You could offer workshops in gardening, musical interludes, art fun for kids or whatever your creative mind can come up with!

Promoting the market on blogs, groups, social networks etc. Setting up Facebook pages and such.

We need great photos of the market!

Please contact me directly at bluejay888 @ gmail. com (no spaces) if you would like to volunteer.

Thanks!

ed note: if you upload the pictures to Flickr, and tag them with “crozet” they will show up in the top right of RealCrozetVA, and allow others to find them more easily.

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Harris Teeter – Not So Green? – Note from a Reader

The Crozet Gazette touts the new Harris Teeter as being the “greenest grocery” – but my experience was anything but. We’d been looking forward trying it (rather than driving to Martin’s… ever since Fabulous Foods closed, Starbreeze stopped delivering, and Horse & Buggy adopted the bad pick up time). However, the selection of natural, organic, or even local foods was truly pathetic – and I had to leave there and drive to another store to finish shopping. There were six packages of natural beef hidden on a wall of meats. Six. The fish case was technicolor. Three types of organic crackers on an entire aisle of snacks.

Shouldn’t green also include the products that you sell and their impact on the environment… or does it really end with laying asphalt and hanging signs?

The real icing on the cake was when the grocery bagger took my reusable shopping bags and put them in a plastic bag… and started putting my groceries in plastic bags. He seemed a shocked when I asked him to please unbag my items and use the reusable shopping bags. It’s sad. Crozet Great Valu does a much better job – add some more organic meats and better wine selection and they have my biz.

It’s one thing to be a monument to suburban processed crap… it is another to pretend that you are green.

Thanks,
Jacqueline