Home Care In Middlefield, CT

After 20 years working in "corporate America," Jill Serra decided it was time for a career change.

The Seymour resident spent Thursday afternoon setting up the latest addition to the Rich Farm Ice Cream franchise at 1 Lorraine Terrace in Middlefield, where Wood and Smoke BBQ used to run seasonally until 2019. Serra opened up her business in tune with the July 4 holiday, just as the original stand in Oxford did. She held a soft opening to work out any kinks the next day, and enjoyed a fair number of customers hungry for the cold treats on hot summer days.

“I’m excited about this new beginning [and] new chapter in our lives,” she said.

Serra has long been a fan of the company’s slow-churned, small-batch ice cream since it opened its first stand in Oxford in 1994. Her personal favorite flavors are black raspberry and coconut. The five-generation family farm dates back to 1950, and was originally named Ajello’s Farm, after Raffaele Ajello, the great-grandfather of Dan Rich, who launched the ice cream business adjacent to the farm. Rich Farm has three other ice cream stand locations in Connecticut (Oxford, Bristol and Brookfield) and another in Placentia, Calif., run by a family member.

Serra said she and other franchise staff members had been searching for a new location for a couple of years before the Middlefield location came on the market. The location provides the same open atmosphere as the other locations, with cows grazing nearby and six picnic tables, Serra said, and customers are already bringing blankets and sitting out on the grass while their kids run around.

“... I am excited to be part of the [Rich Farm] family. It’s a high-traffic location and has a good feel,” she said.

Serra passed her health department inspections last week, and, in the run-up to the holiday weekend, spent most of her time making batches of ice cream. The stand will be open daily from noon to 9 p.m. through Dec. 22.

To ensure brand consistency, the location will carry the same two dozen everyday flavors as the other shops, as well as seasonal flavors such as Irish cream (in March), Cowabunga (June), and upcoming fall blends, including pumpkin Oreo and caramel apple.

There is also a rotating list of specialty flavors, such as salted caramel bacon, lemon meringue pie, cinnamon bun, Hawaiian cow, Fluffernutter and the popular Jersey cow.

Besides traditional ice cream, which uses all-natural ingredients, dairy-free and sugar-free options are also available including dairy-free chocolate peanut butter swirl. The ice cream contains no corn syrup, growth hormones, polysorbates or phosphates, Serra said. Serra notes she will have fresh waffle cones daily and expects to soon add soft serve to the menu. She will also make ice cream cakes and other holiday treats the parent company is already known for, such as ice cream cannolis and ice cream pies.

"I believe in the product," she said. "It’s a premium mix that we use that makes the ice cream very rich and creamy. And it's just delicious."

That product has earned Rich Farm multiple accolades on both the state and national levels. Hearst Connecticut readers voted Rich Farm as the state’s best ice cream shop in 2021 and 2023, and this year it was featured on Yelp's list of the country's top 100 ice cream shops based on customer reviews. Rich Farm Ice Cream was also recognized as a Dairy Farm of Distinction by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture.

Rich Farm Ice Cream is unlike other ice cream shops, Serra said. “We use high- quality ingredients and it’s made fresh daily on premises."

The Middlefield location will be open on Friday from 5 to 9 p.m., Serra said. Starting Saturday, the shop will be open from noon to 9 p.m. daily. For information, visit Rich Farm Ice Cream, Middlefield on Facebook.

MIDDLEFIELD — Gary and Laurie Bullock of Middlefield were bored of doing puzzles and playing Scrabble during the early days of the pandemic, so they decided to try making candles.

Laurie Bullock used to make candles for fun in the '90s by melting wax and pouring it into molds. “We had some candle making supplies on hand and bought more. We tried our hand at it and they came out absolutely horrible,” she recalled.

Gary Bullock immediately went down a rabbit hole of online research. They kept at it until they perfected the art — and science — of making candles.

“He went into serious research mode in the bowels of our basement at 4 o’clock in the morning. We started doing soy [candles] and we really enjoyed it. We decided to wrap up our DJ business and try something new,” Laurie Bullock said.

Using soy wax flakes sold in 50-pound bags and fragrance oils sold by candle companies, they came out with their first candle, Lavender Fields, in November 2020. A year later, they officially launched Ronnie’s Candles with a line of 14 candles in various scents.

Today, they have about 55 scent varieties of candles available in glass mason jars or tins. Just about all the scents are also available as melts. The couple has an online shop, and also sells its candles in seven local shops.

They ship all over. The furthest their candles have traveled to are South Korea and India.

Gary Bullock is the candle maker, and chandler, and handles the website and technical issues for the business, while his wife helps with labeling, creating arty event signage and logistics like phone orders and shipping.

From the start, Gary Bullock really got into candle making. “I just really enjoyed making them, and we have made a lot of candles since,” he said, noting they have gone through about 1½ tons of wax.

Ronnie’s Candles are 100 percent soy, and hand-poured.

Safety was foremost in his mind when they began this enterprise. “You have to find the right wick so that the candle burns properly,” he said. “It can’t get too hot on the outside, especially with a glass vessel or glass jar.

"When you pick them up, you don’t want someone burning themselves," Gary Bullock continued. "It was really a trial in getting the correct wick to burn properly and burn entirely without getting too hot.”

The Bullocks tested different waxes, wicks, vessels and scent fragrance oils before they came up with their current system. The candles not only burn clean, but give off a fine “throw,” a term chandlers use to describe how the scent travels through the air.

“We call it the hot throw and the cold throw. The cold throw is obviously when the candle is just sitting unlit, and when it’s burning, it’s the hot throw,” Gary Bullock said

The candles will give off a pleasing smell when cold as well as hot, he added.

A few of their candles have special names, inspired by people close to them or favorite places. There is Christmas in Connecticut, which needs little explanation. Its scent profile is nutmeg-based, while Hiking Higby, named after the nearby mountain, has notes of cedar and balsam.

There is also a candle simply called James. “James is a very good friend of ours who shares some of our adventures,” Laurie Bullock said.

“We named a candle after him for all the support he has given us through the years,” her husband added.

When the couple is selling their candles at area farmers markets or other events, people often ask what a James candle smells like. According to their website, the answer is the aquatic-inspired candle is similar to Aqua di Gio,and has notes of bergamot, neroli and tangerine as well as patchouli, rosemary, jasmine and persimmon.

Similar to how a musical symphony is developed, candles use a combination of scents in calculated amounts to create a pleasing scent profile. A candle scent will balance top, middle and base notes.

Another candle close to their heart is Blue Devil, which they named for the mascot of Coginchaug Regional High School, which their son graduated from. This candle has top notes of dragon blood resin, black pepper and cardamom; mid notes of cherry, coriander and rose, and base notes of oak, leather, ginger and vetiver.

The business name was also carefully chosen to have a deeply personal meaning. Laurie Bullock’s maiden name is Summerfield. She first thought Summerfield Candles would be a fine name but found it already in use. Thoughts then turned to her father, Ronnie.

“It’s so important to have your business name in your dot-com, so when I searched to see if anybody had Ronnie’s Candles, what came up was Connie’s Candles. Connie is my mom, so I thought that was like a sign from my dad,” she said.

“We went with Ronnie’s Candles, which everyone thinks is either Gary or I because that’s usually the way it goes. He answers to Ronnie more than Gary,” Laurie Bullock explained.

Gary Bullock said when they are at events, he often jokes about this as part of their spiel. “I say that I answer to Gary, I answer to Ronnie, and I answer to my wife — people start cracking up,” he said.

Gary Bullock, a retired state employee, and his wife now work full time at this enterprise and introduce about six new scents each season.

The best-selling scent this season surprisingly has been an earlier inductee, New England Apple.

“Apple has surpassed the pumpkin scents and really taken off this year,” Laurie Bullock said, noting that another favorite is Apple Maple Bourbon. “We were only going to sell that one in the fall, and we now make it year around because there has been such a high demand.”

New scents are often suggested or requested by people, such as their Pineapple Sage candle. “We had a friend of ours interested in a pineapple sage. I would never have thought of that as a combination, so we tried it and she loved it,” she added.

“It’s very addicting, and you just want to keep continuing to make more and more because it’s so fun to smell them," Laurie Bullock said.

For more information, visit ronnies-candles.myshopify.com.

Imagine an ice maker the size of two stacked shipping containers, spewing chunks high in the air for days at a time to create a football field’s worth of frozen water in a 24-hour period.

That’s what it takes to create a snow tubing course at Middlefield’s Powder Ridge Mountain Park & Resort. That tube run was set to be ready for action by Black Friday.

“That is what we refer to as our snow factory,” said Sean Hayes, president and CEO of Powder Ridge, gesturing proudly at the $1.5 million Demaclenko snowPro 260.

“It makes granulated ice, which we can till to a fine, almost powdered snow,” Hayes said, gesturing at a huge mound of ice chunks perched above a muddy slope. “It really complements our other snowmaking and creates a very effective base.”

Despite heavy rain on Tuesday, Powder Ridge employees were set to push that mound of ice flat and then till it into a 450-foot-long run using heavy equipment.

Hayes is hoping for between 200 and 500 daily visitors as the season ramps up.

What will make for a successful season at Powder Ridge this year?

Hayes paused. His goal is to keep the attraction open year-round, with a range of activities to bring people into the outdoors to have fun. In coming weeks, the resort will host a winter festival with vendors, Santa, food trucks and an “ice bar” inside a huge inflatable igloo to entertain visitors.

“I think our whole thing here was the community wanted their mountain back,” he said.

Historic ski hill survives stall

The southernmost ski area in New England, Powder Ridge first opened in 1959 and prospered in the 1960s and ’70s under the management of the Zemel brothers, owners of a New Haven appliance store.

The park was even set to host a 1970 music festival billed as “The Second Woodstock” until the town of Middlefield pulled the plug at the last minute, resulting in a legendary fiasco that inspired a recent documentary.

But a run of warm winters in the 1990s and early 2000s forced the ski area to shut down in 2006. It remained dormant for seven years as new owners of the 255-acre property attempted to create a huge water park at the site, stymied by the town.

In 2012, the shuttered ski area caught the eye of Hayes and his brothers Ed and Frank. The trio had launched the Brownstone Exploration & Discovery Park in 2006 at the site of abandoned quarries in Portland along the Connecticut River, making it a seasonal success.

Sean Hayes said he saw the same opportunity in Middlefield.

“We want to create a destination,” Hayes said. “We did it at Brownstone, we took a property that was basically a giant liability to the local town and converted it into an outdoor recreation.”

The brothers formed a management company to oversee both parks, and soon determined that Powder Ridge could not continue with its recent business plan ? especially as winters continue to get warmer.

“The only way we could do it here was we had to redo the entire business, we could not do it as a ski area. It just wasn’t going to work,” Hayes said. “How do you create the destination resort?”

The Hayes brothers looked back to the Zemel brothers, who had added a pool club and a host of summer activities to Powder Ridge to keep revenue flowing in the warmer months. New technology and sports trends allowed for even more options.

Powder Ridge soon added activities like mountain biking, paintball, disc golf and zip lines. Water slides and an astroturf-like synthetic tubing run add to the summer fun.

A chef with reality TV fame revived the event and catering business at the park’s restaurant, Fire at the Ridge. Recovering to near its pre-pandemic peak, Powder Ridge hosted 75 weddings and corporate events last year.

In 2022, Powder Ridge added the Haunted Trail attraction, a chairlift ride followed by a half-mile walk through woods infested with spirits and ghouls. More than 15,000 people hiked the trail in 15 days in the first year, although a run of rainy weekends kept numbers lower this year.

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Now the focus is on adding fun and a range of activities to winter, with tubing and snow sports for the kids and shopping, food and socializing down the hill at the ice bar for the adults.

All the newer attractions revolve around the mountain and the property’s rural landscape.

“There’s a way to make open space more effective and a revenue generator for the town,” Hayes said. “We’re a mountain resort ? you have to leverage the mountain.”

Warming chills region’s ski industry

Visitor numbers are growing steadily at Powder Ridge even as warming weather continues to play havoc with the ski season. A recent study found that Southern New England was losing its snow cover at the fastest rate of any region in North America, with days with snow cover dropping from an average of 62 days to 31 in the last two decades.

Climate change is challenging ski areas across the region, and only four are still operating in Connecticut: Powder Ridge, Mount Southington, Mohawk Mountain in Cornwall and Ski Sundown in New Hartford.

Powder Ridge alone has announced plans to open so far this year: A live trail cam at Ski Sundown on Wednesday showed muddy slopes still tinted green with mere traces of white at higher elevations.

The Middlefield resort’s strategy to shift to year-round activities mirrors those of successful tourism businesses across Connecticut, said Anthony Anthony, chief marketing officer for the state within the Department of Economic and Community Development.

“They’re getting creative with the natural resources that they have,” Anthony said. “I encourage all businesses around the state to be thinking about how they can be accessible and grow and thrive year-round.”

State tourism dollars are increasingly going to promote outdoor activities like hiking and winter sports, Anthony said, with more spending on social media and niche marketing to those both within and outside of Connecticut.

“I’m willing to capitalize on anything that’s going to help us grow and be different,” Anthony said. “For example, I’m very excited by the fact that Powder Ridge has Connecticut’s only halfpipe… I love being able to promote that.”

Expensive evolution

Looking back over a decade of developing Powder Ridge, Hayes said he would think twice before doing it again. His company’s initial $5 million investment has ballooned into more than $20 million, with costs rising at a relentless rate and financing and insurance increasingly hard to come by.

Customers are also getting harder to please and less likely to tolerate long lines or inconvenience. The restaurant especially has been challenging due to the difficulty of hiring staff for an eatery with seasonal swings in patronage.

The resort’s owners also tangled for years with a Middlefield building official who they say had denied permits and slowed renovations. That official has since left and Hayes said the town is now working cooperatively with the company on planned Powder Ridge additions including a proposal for seasonal campsites. The search for new attractions continues.

“It’s not that I don’t love Powder Ridge ? I love what it does. I love who it is and what it is to the community. And I love developing her and bringing her back to life,” Hayes said.

On the hardest days, he thinks back to his childhood, exploring the outdoors with his brothers in a then-rural Rocky Hill. He wants that experience for his kids and grandkids, both at Brownstone and Powder Ridge.

“We want the kids to be kids, to be able to explore themselves and see who they are and what they are in a safe environment,” Hayes said. “Let them be kids. Give them the opportunity to explore, to jump off a cliff. I mean, where else can you go jump off a cliff? Where else can you put a piece of wood on the bottom of your feet and step off the side of a mountain?”

MIDDLEFIELD — To say that the Sass family goes all out on Halloween is truly an understatement.

What started as a fun activity for their two children at their 145 Ross Road home, the Sass family "crematorium" has grown exponentially in size, intricacy and ghoulishness, with each vignette creepier than the other.

And it’s all for a good cause.

For years, Julie and Charlie Sass took part in the town’s costume contest. “We went all out,” she said. Naturally, the couple looked forward to handing out candy and treats to trick-or-treaters, but they’re weren’t many; about five, she explained.

As the years went on, Julie Sass said, their front yard decorations grew from inflatables and tombstones to this year’s animatronics and full-blown scenes.

The couple came up with the idea of creating an outdoor haunted house of sorts where they allow visitors to walk around, check out each scene and take photographs for free.

The Sasses wanted to not only spread their enthusiasm for all things Halloween but help out the community in the process. That’s when they arrived at the idea of taking in nonperishable food and other items for the Middlefield Food Pantry, Julie Sass said.

The family managed to gather 1,600 pounds of dry food, cleaning products, cans of cat and dog food and much more in 2022. This year they set a goal of surpassing that total and collecting between $1,800 and $2,000 because pantry donations have dropped.

Between five and six years ago, she explained, the family got “serious” about their decorations, adding fog machines run with real ice (since dry ice can be dangerous) and handing out candy.

Weather permitting, the Sasses welcome visitors Fridays and Saturdays from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Constant rain on the weekends — 16 out of 21 since June 1 — has caused donations to drop. “We’ve become very invested in the weather,” Julie Sass said.

Fingers crossed, she noted, the weekend looks dry.

Since the weather has been so unaccommodating to outdoor activity, food pantry collections are low. People have been very generous, Julie Sass said. “Everybody is struggling, and we understand that. We can’t blame people because the weather has been so bad.

“Everything is so expensive,” she added. “We wanted something that people could enjoy so we didn’t want to charge anything.”

The displays are spread out in the yard, Julie Sass said, so during the pandemic, it attracted lots of families. “We wanted a sense of normalcy for them.”

These include Swineson Butchers, where disembodied hands and a man’s torso hang from chains, with wrapped “meats” for sale; and two witches stirring a fiery caldron with a green substance bubbling over the iron pot.

Charlie Sass, an electrician, built 70 percent of what’s there.

“There’s a ton of work that goes into it,” Julie Sass said. Much of the more complicated displays include a “day care” where a skeleton is bound to a spit over a brick pit where eerie, “really demented” toy babies climb up and gather around.

There’s also a skeleton nanny. “All sorts of creepy things happen over there,” she said.

A local, teen graffiti artist sprayed messages such as “watch out behind you” in red dripping lettering on a fence the Sasses erected in front of the house.

Many find the Sass home by word of mouth. Some return every year, and others come by multiple times a month. “People love it,” said Julie Sass, who also lets as many people know about it at the Durham Fair, where the couple volunteer.

“We’re called the ‘Halloween House,’” she added.

The couple’s children, Oliver and Tatum, 13 and 15, also get in on the action, with Tatum dressing up in costume on viewing nights.

It’s up to parents whether they think their young kids won’t be frightened by the crematorium. “It’s not Disney blow-up characters,” Julie Sass said. “We have kids that are 3, 4, 5 that come several times in a month. They love it and run around.”

Working periodically, it takes the Sasses about two and a half weeks to set everything up.

There is also an audible element that adds to the sense of macabre, as two life-size girl dolls in all white intone, “Summer is hot. Winter is cold. But we don’t feel a thing, and we’ll never get old,” and “People think we want to be like them, but pretty soon, you’ll all be like us,” followed by high-pitched laughter.

The Sass Crematorium, open to the public Friday and Saturday nights through the first weekend in November, is free. Motorists are encouraged to park on the road with their hazard lights on, and not in the driveway.

As Connecticut's warm and rainy summer heads into fall, some New England-based experts are taking their guesses on what this means for the state's fall foliage.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environment (DEEP) published a new report with the office of tourism that said the state is headed for a fall foliage season filled with "vibrant" colors. However, Jim Salge, Yankee Magazine's foliage expert and a former meteorologist at New Hampshire's Mount Washington Observatory said that he does not anticipate "punchy" colors in Connecticut and greater New England this fall, and instead anticipates more muted tones.

In an update given on Sept. 13, Salge said that the extremely rainy conditions that have persisted through early September are bringing about leaf fungi. Connecticut is seeing an environment ripe for these fungal infections because fungi thrive in wet conditions, and this may lead to early browning and dropping of leaves. Salge said that while the fungus is not yet widespread throughout Connecticut, it is being seen more in other parts of New England like Vermont, New Hampshire and central Massachusetts.

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Salge said that the increased likelihood of these fungal conditions with the leaf browning will further contribute to the muted, pastel colors he predicted earlier.

Both reports noted that the drought conditions from last year brought about stress to the trees. The DEEP report said its current concern with trees are pockets of gypsy moths that caused defoliation in western parts of the state. Salge said that as of now, he does not see a lot of bugs affecting the trees yet. He has also not seen mold or fungus, but said that could be concern moving forward given the amount of rain the state has had.

Salge also said due to the amount of rainfall this summer, the trees are generally over-watered, and they are over-watered after a year of extreme drought. Now, he said the switch from drought to over-watered is causing the forests more stress.

"This year will be way different than last. Certainly no drought. And although there were pockets of gypsy moth defoliation in western Connecticut, sufficient rains have allowed the trees to re-leaf with less stress," said Christopher Martin, the Director/State Forester of the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection's Division of Forestry, on the state's tourism website. "Leaves will stay green longer this season and if overnight temperatures cooperate, dipping into the low 30s overnight a few times toward later September, we should expect everything to come together all at once.

Salge said he could potentially see a situation in which the leaves change all at once if one big cold front comes "barreling through" the state. However, he said it is more likely that Connecticut's fall will be warm and wet.

"In order to have maximum vibrancy, you need the forest to dry out, you need bright blue skies, lots of sunshine and crisp clear cool nights; both of those things will really kick start the foliage, Salge said. "We are headed into an El Niño pattern and typically in an El Niño pattern those are not necessarily the conditions you end up getting. It ends up staying cloudier, wetter and warmer later into the fall and that further can impact the vibrancy."

Both experts agree that colder overnight temperatures in early October will be most among the most important factors influencing the foliage season. As of mid September, Salge said that typical New England fall weather has yet to hit.

In terms of the length of the season, DEEP said the leaves will stay green longer and peak later in the season. Salge also said that he sees a potential peak that is either on time or late, anticipating it to be a longer foliage season.

Leaves change color when the amount of sunshine decreases in the fall, which causes leaves to produce less chlorophyll, according to the state's department of forestry. Leaves also contain yellow and orange carotenoids, which emerge when the green chlorophyll is decreased. This is when leaves change colors to vibrant yellows, red and oranges.

Given that most of the predictors factors for the foliage season have yet to occur, Salge said that weighing all of the factors that bring about the bright red and orange hues is always challenge.

"What I find every year when writing this report — I've been at this for a dozen years or so now — is there are so many conflicting factors that point towards brighter or less bright, or stronger or weaker, or longer or shorter and its just weighing all of those conditions that often point you to contradictory answers," Falge said. "You ask a dozen experts for their predictions and you will get half a dozen different answers."

Aug 23, 2023|Updated Sep 13, 2023 4:27 p.m.

By Amy Coval

Amy Coval was a Trending Reporter for CT Insider who specialized in data-driven stories.

She could be found covering business, education and real estate matters across Connecticut. Her reporting took her from open houses inside Connecticut’s hectic housing market to suiting up with local dairy farmers in the Litchfield Hills.

Amy’s deep dives into state and local data allowed her to shed light on the impacts of budget airlines’ expansion across Connecticut as well as how the state’s income gap led to statewide discrepancies in SAT performance. She often created tools and trackers for residents to explore everything in their zip codes — from walkability to fall foliage to rental prices.

Amy is originally from San Diego. She graduated from Northwestern University with a degrees in journalism and sociology. In her free time, she enjoys all things Taylor Swift, running and trying new recipes. Prior to joining Hearst, Amy worked at The San Francisco Chronicle and was a guest contributor for the Pulitzer Center.

By Andrew DaRosa

Andrew DaRosa is a SPJ award-winning journalist who has worked at Hearst Connecticut Media Group since 2018. He currently works as a Senior Audience Producer and a Trending Reporter for CT Insider and also runs the SEEN section.

He can often be found covering Connecticut’s expanding music scene, supposedly “haunted” sites around the state or keeping track of big winners in the Connecticut Lottery. He has been at the forefront of multiple music-related stories around Connecticut, including the Sound On Sound music festival. With a passion for music, over the past decade, Andrew has interviewed members of Judas Priest, Goose, The National, Trey Anatasio Band, The Head and the Heart and Maren Morris.

Originally from Massachusetts, Andrew graduated from Fairfield University in 2018 with a degree in digital journalism. Since working for Hearst Connecticut, Andrew has become a four-time winner of Connecticut Society of Professional Journalism awards for his coverage of Connecticut band Goose, hiking the state and his human interest stories.

When he isn’t writing about Ed and Lorraine Warren or jam bands, Andrew can be found going to concerts with his wife or hanging out with his cat, Spud.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmdarosa