I have another confession to make. First I confessed that I bought a dog, even though I don’t like dogs. Then I confessed to not having the power to make markets swoon over my every written word. And now I must confess that I like dark fall days. I went to a private high school in Williams Bay, where at the start of the school day kids the homeroom teacher would solicit prayer requests. Horrifying, I know. But it was a private school, so no one was able to sue anyone for the inclusion. Someone’s grandmother was usually on the list. Someone’s father or uncle was looking for work. And someone else had a college placement test that they desperately needed a healthy dose of divine intervention to up their score. And then there was me and my requests. They rarely held any seriousness, and my grandmothers were both healthy then and in need of little mention. Instead, I’d turn my attention to the weather, and during October I would submit selfish requests that reflected my desire for colder, darker, wetter weather.
I did this because I was desperate for the fall brown trout run to start in Williams Bay. I would watch the water on my way to and from school, hoping to see a swish of a brown tail in the shallow water at the silty mouth of Southwick Creek. In order to speed up the migration of the brown trout from the deep waters of Geneva into skinny little streams in Williams Bay and Fontana, I needed cold weather, dark skies, and plenty of rain. As such, I prayed for it. Ridiculous, yes. But on a dark day like today where the temperature will struggle to exceed 50 degrees, my first thought this morning was to take a pass by the stream and look for those brown tails that have eluded me for most of my life.
Dark days like today also make it painfully obvious that darker, colder days lie ahead. A couple of years ago, I started a property management offshoot of Geneva Lakefront Realty; a company my friend and I dubbed Strathford Management. The name means nothing. But the service that company provides can prove invaluable to the Lake Geneva vacation home owner. With the calender soon to turn to November, the commencement of our annual Winter Watch program isn’t far behind. While the management company technically will also manage your property, the primary function of this business is to provide winter house check services for those who own vacation homes in this market. The program is actually quite efficient, with weekly checks of your condo or home between December 1st and April 1st. We have an additional check performed on any day when the temperature drops below zero. Each time we’re at your house, we’ll record the visit on a log sheet and send you a text or email to confirm there is no heat loss or water issue present. If there is a problem of any sort, we’ll notify you immediately and contact your emergency plumber or HVAC contractor to initiate the repair.
The goal of the service is to provide peace of mind to absentee owners, though the service is also provided for customers who come up on the weekends all through the winter. If we can catch a burgeoning problem on a weekday before it graduates to a weekend catastrophe, the fee of $395 for the entire four months of service will prove well worth that minimal rate. If nothing develops over the weekend, and you’re only getting texts or emails from the company weekly stating your heat is on and no issues exist, I imagine your peace of mind will also be worth the price of admission. Every year, no matter how many pleas we make to provide these winter watch services, there are homes that will turn back our advances and experience a furnace issue and a corresponding pipe break. You know these homes by their frosty windows, but with our winter watch program, there’s little reason to risk your own Lake Geneva property to this unfortunate fate.
Strathford Management partner Twilight Solutions also offers complete Holiday lighting packages, and though it seems too early to begin such contemplation, it’s better to make lighting and decorating arrangement decisions before winters untimely arrival a mere five weeks from now. If you know anyone who might like the learn about the holiday lighting/decorating options or our winter watch program, I’d be grateful if you’d forward them this post or send along my email. For now, the pull of Southwick Creek has overwhelmed me.