As the year draws to a close we would like to take this time to thank all of our supporters – staff, friends, colleagues, neighbors, customers and those who are all of the above. We certainly can’t say it has been an easy year. In many ways the impact of the Covid pandemic is still playing out. We have been saddened by the closing of many breweries, several of whom were good friends.
But it has also been a productive year and one in which we have seen many firsts.
We have welcomed 2 new staff persons and been honored to have 3 ‘old timers’ return.
Harry and Ray have brewed 23 different styles of beer this year. Our amazing staff served 10,764 different orders including 744 flights and 19,268 pints. Between the tasting room and farmers markets we sold over 2500 crowlers (and that machine is still going strong!) and 4715 bottles. And we also sold 3,519 oysters! And a huge shout out to all our shuckers. Certainly a job well done by all.
We also had many ‘firsts’ this year including the first set of quadruplet Leicester Longwool lambs born here (and probably the first in this country for this breed) and all are doing very well still. We hosted our first circus – and who knew one of Ray’s many talents was as a “stage hand.” For the first time ever, we were selected to be the film site for a Toyota commercial. It was also an honor and privilege to be able to host fund raisers both for the STOP MPRP project but also for school board candidate Chad Wilson. As a former colleague who worked both with Tom in Social Studies and Carolann in Special Ed at Gaithersburg HS it was exciting to be able to support him. We were glad to have the participants for the 2nd Road Rally for Second Chances garage make us one of their Poker Run Stops. We also for the first time have started adding lamb to our farm market sales ‘menu.’ On the hop side we planted the first of our own Monocacy hops and were able to glean a small first year harvest.
We were glad to welcome back both Rick’s Run and the Metaphysical Fair and look forward to having them back in 2025. Not really a first but we also had a great Eclipse party – too bad we can’t do that every year! This fall we were able to provide a venue for many of the local youth sport leagues to hold their end of year parties. We continued to host ‘field trip’ classes for M2 Dog training and also welcomed back the Appalachian Air Canines frisbee dog group.
On a broader note, Tom was involved in our County Executive’s Agritourism Work group to help try to modernize agritourism in the County. However, the idea of “modernizing” looked more like ruining – so with the help of the Farm Bureau, of which Tom has been on the Board of Directors, and many evenings providing information and public comment to the Frederick County Council, proposed changes to the current agritourism law in the county failed. We are very happy with the result. It is hard enough to make a living farming – and agritourism helps many farmers in the county stay in business.
Once again we thank everyone for your support and look forward to an exciting 2025.