It's been a while, hasn't it? I blew right past Thanksgiving with no update at all, and now we're already into the last week for most of the other volunteers here on the farm. By Monday evening, more than half of the farm will be on their way off to other great things. Seven of us are staying on through the winter, though, and into the spring.
And speaking of winter, central Massachusetts has finally decided to stop playing around (we had a day in the mid-sixties last week) and commit to the cold already. It snowed a little earlier in the week and I took a lot of pictures. Then, it snowed hard core last night and all day today but I didn't really take pictures. You should enjoy these, though, and then imagine all this stuff covered in another foot or so of snow.
The only thing left in the garden is this super hardy kale. They look like tiny palm trees. Tiny, sad, frozen palm trees.
I was super excited about all the snow.
It made everything gorgeous.
These hilarious berries looked like they were wearing Marie Antoinette-era wigs.
And Ivy and I found these bent over trees, so the only logical thing to do was pose just like them. (Yes, I am just as blown away as you are at Ivy's amazing bendability.)
She and I made snow angels.
And then Nic came along and inspired a snowball fight.
Meanwhile, Ben and Sarah were enjoying the warmth of the kitchen whilst making farm animal-shaped gingerbread cookies.
The cookies are for the big event we're having this weekend. It's called the Celebration of Living Gifts and folks will come and learn about Heifer International while enjoying cookies (obviously) and cider and hay rides. There will be ornament decorating, a bonfire (with sticks and marshmellows), and lots of animals, some of whom you'll get to take your picture with. The whole thing will also be what's known as a Living Gift Market, which means this:
Heifer International takes in more money this time of year than any other because it encourages people to buy livestock as gifts for their loved ones instead of some thing they may or may not want. Heifer's whole mission is to work to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth through sustainable livestock and agricultural development. So people make donations to Heifer which go to buy a sheep or a llama or a flock of ducks or whatever, to be given to a community somewhere that needs it. A ton of those donations come in during the holidays, so part of our celebration is going to be a living gift market, meaning we'll have a lot of our animals (which represent most of the animals Heifer works with around the world) in the barn for people to see. If they decide they want to "buy an animal" they'll get to pick out what they like and make a donation on the spot.
The water buffalo, llamas, alpacas, and pigs are already in the barn. We're going to add a cow and calf, a few sheep and goats, some chickens and some rabbits. We've got an empty beehive to represent our bee projects, and a fairly large tree to represent the tree seedling nurseries we do, too. It's going to be great. And the whole farm looks like a winter wonderland just in time.
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