Celebration of Living Gifts

This past weekend was the Celebration of Living Gifts at the farm! It was a rousing success. We had over 500 people come out and raised about $6,700 in animal gift donations. We had all our types of animals in the barn for people to see. We had goats and sheep and rabbits and chickens inside.

Pigs, llamas, alpacas, water buffalo, and a cow and calf outside.

Sam and Elizabeth stood outside on Sunday to answer people's questions.

And Ivy stood inside and did the same. She also held various small animals (like this guinea pig) so folks could pet them.

Everything was decorated.

Do you like the cow at the tope of our tree?

However, some of our decorations were edible.

Tilly pulled this down completely.

So we made her wear this hat and she became the belle of the farm.

We had this little area where folks could get their picture taken with the animals.

That's what Liz Jo did all weekend.

And we got a picture of all of us!

We also had a lot of other activities. We had a bake sale.

There was a tractor-pulled hay ride.

Jason and Susan were down in Poland making cards, ornaments, and other paper crafts.

And I was down in Guatemala making rooster ornaments. It was very cold in the house built for the Land of Eternal Springtime. (The stairs were for the hay ride wagon.)

But Jen and I lit a fire and got cozy. We colored a lot of sample roosters.

Aren't they cute??? Jen's is the creative one; mine is the boring brown one.

We also had a fire going outside with sticks and s'more making stuff. It led to a very long philosophical discussion about what came first: the marshmallow or the puffy jacket.

And there was gingerbread cookie decorating. They were all animal shaped.

I made this goat for Jen. I was going for realism, obviously.

At the end of the day, Liz Jo and Chris counted up the totals and updated the tally of animal donations on the window behind them.

It was a very successful, fun weekend, and now the Fall season is officially over. Folks were leaving for good all week, and I actually came home myself last night, but only for a couple of weeks. More thoughts on those lovely, wonderful people with whom I shared my Fall coming later, but this is probably long enough for now. Talk to you soon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today is my good friend Liz's birthday! This is probably not super exciting for you unless you are her (Hi Liz!), but it was exciting for me because she only lives an hour and a half away. This is the closest I've lived to any of my college friends since graduating, but we still hadn't seen each other until yesterday. I drove down to Hartford in the early afternoon, hung out all evening and into the night, then left really early to be back on the farm by 8:00 this morning because today was our Celebration of Living Gifts! But more on that later.

It was really great to see an old friend. We (she) made ravioli with mushroom filling that were really good, we had a roasted green bean and bell pepper dish, plus several dips and appetizery things. She also made an uh-mazing cake/torte thing with chocolate and sweet potatoes that didn't taste like sweet potatoes at all and was fantastic. It was fun to meet some of her post-college friends; we played Taboo (and my team totally won) and sat around and chatted a lot. Most of the guests spent the night and I may or may not have stayed up until 3:00 talking and catching up. Which wouldn't have been so bad if I a.) hadn't stayed up until 3:00 the night before, too, baking bread and dancing to "Love Shack" in my living room (hey, all these wonderful people are leaving! We had to have a dance party!) and b.) didn't have to leave at 6:00. So I only slept for three hours, but that was okay, I guess. I kept myself awake on the drive home by belting out Wicked in its entirety, and then being outside all day today I was too cold to think about being sleepy.

It was quite a wonderful birthday party and I'm very glad I got to see an old friend. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am off to get some sleep before The Celebration of Living Gifts, Part II, tomorrow! Goodnight! And Happy Birthday Liz!!!!!

Snow! Again! But this time for real!

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.

Beach Day!

Last week was my roommate's birthday, so she and I and Nic and Ivy went to the little town of Rockport on the coast of Massachusetts where she was born and lived the first few years of her life. It was a lovely New England beach town that almost too idyllic.

We stopped by The Coffee Shop and got coffee, hot chocolate, and Norwegian coffee bread, which was delicious.

Then we went and ate it on the beach.

Here is the view.

We looked for cool shells.

And we found some!

This cemetery was across the street from the beach. Nic, Ivy, and Elizabeth look appropriately freaked out, if you can tell. Also, note the crypt on the right.

We went to a bookstore that used to be a bank.

And then had a picnic out on a jetty.

Here is the view of the town and the land across the way.

There were also cool seaweed covered rocks. All in all, New England beaches were much rockier than Florida beaches.

And then we went to a store called Rocking Cupcakes and got Elizabeth a birthday cupcake. It was absurd. We got two, actually, and almost couldn't finish them because they were so sugary.

We took walks around and looked at the shops and the houses and it was lovely. And here is one last picture of me.

And tomorrow is Thanksgiving! Get ready for a great big update! Right now, through, I need to run to the grocery store!