75th Chassell Strawberry Festival
The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind with the 75th Chassell Strawberry Festival last weekend and with family in town over the last week. Heading into the Strawberry Festival, Industrial Graphics was able to get us the three remaining rail-mounted interpretive signs. Brian Waters, Steve Spahn, and I were able to get those in place a day ahead of the festival.
Kayleigh Karinen who Julie and I had met in Helsinki back in March was in town as part of her Finlandia Foundation project. She joined us to learn about how Finnish immigrants figured into the mill’s operations, particularly in the lumber camps that fed the mill.
That evening the community came together under the pavilion to clean strawberries in preparation for the festival. So many participated that the work was completed in just over two hours. Afterwards, Kayleigh interviewed me about growing up around Finnish-American culture. I shared quite a range of stories about my experiences as well as what I have learned about the origins of my Finnish immigrant ancestors who came from four distinct regions within Finland from the 1880s to 1904.
The Strawberry Festival got underway on Friday and as a member of the Lions Club I spent three hours from 11 until 2 serving up Strawberry shortcake. We enjoyed the fish boil and I stopped by to help those Lions Club volunteers with the clean-up.
Saturday morning I stopped in for breakfast at the Chassell Township Schools and then headed over to pull weeds that had grown up through the boardwalk. I put in another shift in the kitchen, but instead of dishing up strawberries, I washed cake pans, trays, and empty 5-gallon containers that had held strawberries. Afterwards, we enjoyed the chicken BBQ put on by the Chassell First Responders.
Saturday evening we picked up Jessica and the boys from the Houghton County airport. It would be a very busy next several days with them in town!
Sunday, our hiking group met at the site of the Cliff Mine where we received an outstanding guided tour from Sean Gohman who is the Executive Director of the Keweenaw National Historic Park Advisory Commission. The Cliff Mine which started operation in the 1840s was the first profitable copper mining venture in the Keweenaw.
You can see my GoPro video from the hike at this link to the Remote Workforce Keweenaw YouTube channel at:
On our way back through Houghton we grabbed a couple specialty pizzas for takeout from the Ambassador.
On Monday we headed out for a couple of adventures starting with an exploration of the steel dam on the Salmon-Trout River at Redridge.
From there we drove to the end of the road at Freda to explore the ruins of the Champion Stamp Mill which processed ore from the Champion Mine in Painesdale.
Coming back through Houghton we stopped and had pasties at Roy’s before exploring the liftbridge between Houghton and Hancock.
You can see my GoPro video from the adventure on this day at this link to the Remote Workforce Keweenaw YouTube channel:
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