BOAT CAMP

A steady stream of runners, in-line skaters and cyclists on the White Rock trail is the norm, but more athletes are getting into the water these days, by way of kayak or canoe. Area schools even offer rowing as a physical education credit, and students from throughout the greater Dallas area have joined the competitive White Rock Boathouse Juniors Crew Team. The team will host weeklong row camps for beginners all summer. New sessions start June 20 and 27, July 18 and 25, and August 1 and 8 for students entering the eighth grade and older. The camp is $75, and need-based scholarships are available. This is a good opportunity to see if your youngster takes to rowing, says mom Monette Irwin, whose daughter Alex rows on the WRBJ team. “Alex has found a sport she is passionate about, she is getting into great shape and she is having fun,” Irwin says. “And it is so beautiful to watch those boats glide across the water.” Interested? There is also an opportunity to check out the row team on National Learn to Row Day, June 4 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at the boathouse at White Rock Lake. Register for a summer session at wrbjuniors.com/summercamps.

TOLER

R ON & M ONA H ALL

Ron’s Organics, Inc.

ron Hall wants to save the world, he says, “one yard at a time.” To some, that might sound corny. But Hall is serious, and for good reason. Before starting Ron’s Organics, Hall worked as a Dallas firefighter for 20 years. In that line of work, he says, “I saw all the damage that chemicals can do and decided to make a change, beginning with my own home.” So he studied, took courses, attended lectures, read books and consulted with some of the leaders in the field of organics. He is both a certified landscape and nursery professional, as well as a licensed irrigator and applicator and a member of the Texas Nursery Landscape Association. With all this experience behind him, Hall can help you obtain and maintain a beautiful and healthy landscape. Ron’s Organics sells nearly two dozen special products — called Ron’s Custom Blends — carefully formulated to make your gardening experiences more rewarding. They are, Hall says, “effective, easy to use, affordable and all natural.” Ron’s Organics also offers lawn maintenance and landscaping, landscape design, irrigation, organic fertilization and stone, flagstone and pavestone work. The garden center, which he runs with his wife, Mona, includes an organic nursery and gift shop. Though Hall worked hard to educate himself about chemicalfree alternatives in order to make his business a success, he’s not the kind of guy to rest on his laurels. He’s constantly striving “to know more, do more and be more” in the field of organic landscape management. “My organic conversion was a struggle,” he says. “But it’s been worth it.” organicdynamics.com

972-216-5296, fax 972-288-0828

1820 S. Beltline Rd. Mesquite TX 75181

WimBenslivesinanadorable remodeled White Rock Lake-area home with his pretty wife who will give birth to their first child in September. Bens, a 33-year-old who recently quit his fulltime advertising job to pursue his true passion, beer, is part scientist, part artist and part entrepreneur. (Some scientists wear lab coats, but Bens looks more like a fraternity brother in plaid shorts, flip flops and a Brower’s Café T-shirt.) He hopes to take his love of craft beer brewing to the next level, by making a business out of it with his Lakewood Brewing Company (lakewoodbrewingcompany.com).

For now, however, he can’t legally sell his honey-tinted potables. That doesn’t trouble him too much. He, like many of his beer-brewing contemporaries in the White Rock area, doesn’t brew for profit.

Hopefully, that will come later, but for now he is content to perfect his product and share with friends (call it public relations) while he is working out the logistics.

“Most brewers [have grown] tired of all the bad expensive beer they drank in college, so they bought a beer kit and made their own — and these beginner beer kits make horrible, horrible beer,” he says. “But some stick with it and turn it into a sustained hobby.” essentially, he explains, beer is made through the process of fermentation. He boils a grain-derived sugar solution called wort, adding hops for flavor and preservation. Then he adds the yeast, which goes to work eating the sugar and creating alcohol.

The process, he explains, is biochemical, culinary and artistic — “the miracle of life,” he says.

Inside the Benses’ home, an office (with shelves of books about craft home brewing, the science of brewing and the history of brewing, to name a few) and a compartment of the freezer (containing zip-locked baggies of grains and hop pellets) is dedicated to beer making.

Out back, long hop vines wind in and out of the patio trellis slats. Beyond that is the spotless, highly organized garage in which the magic happens.

One can go from just-the-fundamentals to totally geeked out during this process. Bens leans toward the latter. After a course in advanced home brewing at the Siebel Institute, multiple brewing awards, and a diploma in Intensive Brewing Science and engineering from the American Brewers Guild (which also required an apprenticeship that he fulfilled at Rahr and Sons in Fort Worth), he practices developing unique quality craft beers, which takes experience and patience.

“The first few batches I made when

I first started were pretty mediocre,” he says. “After taking the courses, I switched to all-grain recipes, which gives you the result that the professional breweries get. It’s making something from scratch rather than a kit.” A home brewer is like a baker, in a sense, he says. “The big manufacturers are like Ms. Baird’s bread, while we are like the guy who hand makes the bread at your local bakery.”

The resurgence in popularity of locally made products might be tied in with the emerging home brewing trend, says East Dallas brewer Robin Gill Lacy, who recently led a beer brewing class at Oil and Cotton Creative Exchange in Oak Cliff.

“The do-it-yourself expansion is creating interest in all types of homemade products. Personally, I have this crazy idea of a modern day commune where everyone makes everything you need to live on — food, beer, quilts,” she says with a laugh. A chef by trade, Gill Lacy says she has always been interested in creating useful things.

“Brewing is kind of like cooking something for a couple of weeks.”

She thinks the craft- and home-brewing culture has probably changed over the years. When she first attended a meeting of the Home Brewers Association a few years ago, it seemed as if the group comprised mostly older, very serious men. But the class she taught last spring included a mostly younger set of men and women.

Like Bens, Gill Lacy can’t legally sell the beer, but she sometimes has brewcurious friends over to observe the process, and she drinks or shares her product.