The Fair

Mark and I went to the Common Ground Fair this weekend with Mom and Dad, while Isaac spent a few days in New York, staying with Zoë in her luxurious suite (Max was there too). There's never enough time to see everything we want to see, taste all we want to taste (a patient Lulu waited at home for our return), and we swore that next year we'd get a dog sitter so we can spend more hours wandering through exhibit tents and watching border collies show off and eating the best fair food on the planet.

Could the day have been more perfect? Yes, it could've been ten degrees cooler. But it was lovely anyway, and we drank iced chai and ate potato chip fries and admired border collies with Jason and Amanda.

I always leave the fair with dreams of planting vegetables, raising chickens, building things, camping, keeping bees, knitting, buying a CSA share, seeing more of Maine, milking goats, and (mostly) bringing friends and family members* back with me next year.

I just talked to Zoë, and we realized that it'll be September, 2014 before she can come with us again (she'll be abroad all next year). Weird! She would've loved the farmers from Songbird Farm, and so would Max: they had a bicycle-powered corn grinder setup, an adorable sign, huge smiles on their faces, and at one point they all picked up musical instruments and started singing in harmony. We bought some pickled beets from them, of course.

Yay! Bees!

Puppy countdown: TWELVE days.

*Holly would love the fiber tents, the alpacas and angora rabbits and spinning demonstrations. Jonah would love the chickens. Oona would love the border collies. Ben and Stella would probably want to climb inside Hobbit Holes and slide down muddy hills on cardboard. My bruddies would both love it. Actually, I can hardly think of anyone who shouldn't put it on his or her calendar for next year.