HarvestFest 2008

Where can Lucy go to see sheep, goats, pigs, cows, chickens, and tiny kittens? Plus get knocked over by a giant dog? “Circle M Farm”:http://www.circlemfarm.com/, of course.

We have an annual “tradition”:/news/2006/vay-cay-with-bay-bay/ of taking a trip up to visit our city-turned-country friends, the “Marions”:/news/2008/meet-the-marions/, at their farmette every autumn. Lucy’s godparents, “derek and Linda”:/news/2008/kay-kay/, are part of the plan too, and we all tuck ourselves into the “Marions'”:/news/2008/rosies-baptism/ cozy farmhouse and cook up a giant pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner.

The highlight this year was the kittens. Five-week-old “"Barack"”:/news/2008/lucy-want-to-hold-the-kitty/ and “Obama” came to live with the Marions on Election Day and have been making themselves at home ever since. If they weren’t adorable enough on their own, we could hardly stand the cuteness when Lucy spent hours chasing them, picking them up, and snuggling them. And mostly learning not to squish them. She has come away with a few battlescars from the encounters and a wealth of kitten-carrying experience. Rosie even tried to catch one of them, but they were a little too fast for her.

We enjoyed a fabulous Thanksgiving-style meal of home-grown ham (in truth, it was “Piggy Lou’s”:/news/2008/have-you-met-my-pig/ real-world namesake), a yummy new “stuffing recipe”:http://wondertime.go.com/life-at-home/article/beat-this-stuffing.html I’ve wanted to try, fabulous garden-fresh “brussels sprouts”:http://wondertime.go.com/life-at-home/article/beat-this-brussel-sprouts.html, and an amazingly rich “chocolate cream pie”:http://www.leitesculinaria.com/recipes/cookbook/choc_cream_pie.html — plus sweet potatoes, rutabaga, squash, and a zesty celeriac salad. Yum! We were all holding our stretched-out bellies by the end of it, but amazingly, I didn’t gain any “weight”:/news/2008/mission-accomplished/ from the feasting — hooray!

I must say I am pleased to have another successful travel adventure with two babies under our belts. We needed to bring a bit more equipment with us this time (like six bags of food and groceries for our festival dinner), but luckily Jon had brought up the pack ‘n’ plays a few weeks before so he was able to squeeze it all in with his amazing packing skills. I worked pretty obsessively the week before trying to organize things to bring, baking and cooking anything that could be done in advance, and planning out everything as minutely as I could. The advance work totally paid off — I was able to relax once I got there and had a great time with our friends and our kiddies too!

Above all, it was great to gather together with old friends, “relax together”:http://hoc.uspoc.us/2008/harvest-fest-2008. Hooray for our country-mouse friends!