BoomerGirl.com

This is Ed. I met him — er, rather, I made him — in Door County, Wisconsin, at an art farm with four llamas, two horses, nine goats and a slew of cats, chickens and ducks.

If you look at a map, Door County is the strand of hair that escaped from the east side of the hat of Wisconsin. It's a little strip of gorgeous that stretches into Lake Michigan about an hour east of Green Bay. Wealthy Chicagoans snagged much of the bucolic peninsula to build summer homes. And other than dairy and berry and cherry farms, the sole purpose of this 250 miles of shoreline seems to be entertaining vacationers like me with food festivals, fish boils (white fish from Lake Michigan is thrown into a boiling pot with tiny red potatoes, set on fire and served up with cole slaw and cherry pie) and more outdoor fun than an L.L. Bean catalog.

I went to Door County in the dead of winter when ice fishing was the purview of most conversations. The Packers had been knocked out of the Superbowl a few weeks earlier, so catching perch and drinking beer in ice fishing shacks was one of the main forms of recreation — unless you happen to be game to exercise your creative muscle.

Photo by Pam Grout

Door County's Hands On Art Farm, a 65-acre mecca of creativity, is open year-round with many opportunities for making “Ed's” and other useful creations. With 4,000 square feet of art space, the unique farm with its barn and many outbuildings offers everything from rock and roll art parties to art camp to daily hand's on workshops. Guests can throw pottery, paint furniture, tile and grout mosaics, fuse stained glass or even, if their stomachs are growling, build their own pizzas.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of the art farm (Owner Cy Turnbladh thinks it may be the one and only) is that welder wannabe's can hone their skills at a blow torch. Where else, in an afternoon's time, can you elbow your way into a machine shop, wield a blowtorch, use a plasma cutting table and and create a metal sculptures like Ed? While I'm quite partial to the funny-looking new addition to my home, other guests to Cy's machine shop have come away with metal fountains, kinetic wind pieces, fire pits, chairs and even yard art of their own children.

Cy calls the welding shop the “Metal Studio Buffet” and not only are guests, after donning the requisite helmets, gloves and ear protection, allowed to cut their own shapes, but they can pick between a wide variety of “buffet items.” Cy offers a mind-boggling selection of spheres, swirls, balusters and even precut steel dragonflies, lizards, suns and moons, all ready to be welded into the metal art piece of your choice.

As Cy, an accomplished potter who likes the versatility of the art farm's many mediums, likes to say, “You're only limited by your own imagination.”

Folks not quite ready for MIG welders can help in Cy's ongoing silo project. For $3, anyone can paint a tile that will be proudly mosaiced onto the farm's 100-year-old silo. All proceeds from the tiles are donated to the Door County Humane Society in Cy's mother, Mary's, name.

The farm itself is a testament to unbridled creativity and determination. When Cy first bought it in 1996, it had been abandoned for 15 years and friends thought he was wacko to leave his prosperous studio on the main drag. Just to get in the barn, he had to haul out 20,000 pounds of junk. He eventually rebuilt the farm's decrepit home, turned the barn into two floors of studio space complete with sunny art decks (one for creating in the morning and one for the afternoon) and is now, one by one, renovating the farm's outbuildings, all of which are splotched and dripped with the creative efforts of former customers. The llamas — Vincent, Georgia, Jackson and Salvador Dali Llama — are rescues and, of course, named for famous artists.

While Cy's art farm alone could fill a vacationer's camera, plan enough time to relish Door County's other offerings. Often called the Cape Cod of the Midwest, the Door, as regulars call it, has a string of quaint storybook villages, five state parks, picturesque harbors, many with marinas filled with sailboats, 11 golf courses and the 130-acre Clearing (www.theclearing.org), a Scandinavian folk school offering classes in everything from woodcarving to quilting to how to better appreciate a chamber orchestra.

Hand's On Art Studio can be reached at 3655 Peninsula Players Road, Fish Creek, WI 54212, (920) 868-9311, (888) 868-9311, www.handsonartstudio.com. And the Door County Visitor Bureau that can send you literature on B&Bs and other unique lodges on both the lake and bay sides of Door County is waiting for your call at 1015 Green Bay Rd, Box 406, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235-0406, (800) 52-RELAX, www.doorcounty.com