Another Pumpkin Frolic

It has been a busy fall so far. I am never prepared to the landslide that comes with the start of school. Are you? I have stopped deluding myself into thinking that I'm gonna have all this time when the kids are gone, but I am still amazed at how busy I am.

So, since I am trying to get my barn doors hung in my family room this week (you guys are gonna die when you see how good they look), and since I have been writing really serious stuff lately and that, done too often, is a buzz kill, I thought I'd do something lighter.

I'm taking you with me to the pumpkin patch today.

There are about 10 million pumpkins hiding in this picture. They are all behind the leaves. 

We made our annual Columbus Day pilgrimage to Mayne's Tree Farm in Buckeystown MD last week. Why Columbus Day? Because the kids are out of school here, and DK is off work. And it's never crowded at the patch on a Monday.  (I wrote a big long post all about this patch a few years ago. Here you go, if you want to know all about Mayne's Tree Farm, either for pumpkins in the fall or Christmas trees in Nov-Dec.)

This is my favorite of all our family traditions. We have been coming here for almost 20 years, despite the hour long drive.

With Pumpkins like these, can you blame us?

Can you guess which one I brought home? Here's a hint:

Well, that is the one I was originally going to bring home. It's the one I searched for and came out of the field with. It was My Precious. Until I set it down in the wheel barrow with the other ones that my family had chosen. Pink was not a great fit with the wheel barrow full of hunter orange.

So I opted for the tiger striped one and the white one. Can't you picture a tiger face on that yellow and green striped pumpkin? And the white one is for eating after Halloween. Maybe pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.

Mmmm. Pie.

For some reason, this was a particularly jokey year. 

#3 decided to wear fake glasses.

Go figure.

And it was an excellent day for sunbathing. 

And being super-human with tractors.

All ferocious tractor photos were taken by DK. 

Especially this one. My camera doesn't do this:

Sigh. Just look at that polarized sky. I am so glad he has a nicer camera than I do. I get to use his when I need it. #stealyourspousesbeststuff

So what else did we do?

Wrestled on giant bales of hay. They both fell off right after this.

And then decided to have fun with gourds

#1 realized this may the second to last time she gets to come here, as graduation from high school is starting to loom in the horizon. She spent a lot of time staring at things, creating memories to carry with her.

It's always interesting to realize you really ARE going to be leaving home and going on your own great adventure.

She and #2 climbed through a hole and into the silos at some point, but I couldn't get her to give me her new iPhone long enough to download her pics shooting up through the silo roof. They are cool. I saw them last night.

DK went and bought a gallon of the best apple cider known to mankind, 

and then got back to it with his magic camera.

I just walked around, happy. It was such a lovely day. 

When there are pumpkins everywhere and it's fall, even a bad hair day can't bring you down.

The morel of this story is GO OUTSIDE AND ENJOY THE FALL! 

Go on! It's so stinking fun! Even the 17 year old thinks so.

 Tell me how your family sneaks away for fun... I am always open 

to new ideas for running away.

Talk to you soon,

CM Shaw

Asher Hill Farm - Branches source for Vintage Goods ... and Hand Spun Wool?

Hey you all. Sorry for the break in posts there. It gets a bit dodgy here in blog world when the barn sale starts to ramp up. And DK gets cranky if we run out of underwear and forks, so I have to look up from my computer or painting projects every so often and live the rest of my life.

That said, Monday was Columbus Day and my kids were out of school and the government was shut down, so we headed off on our annual family adventure to Maynes Tree Farm to pick pumpkins right from the patch. (Here's the link if you missed out on last year's post about it.) And I'll give you one guess where it is. You win if you said Buckeystown,  MD. 

 I always buy two pumpkins.

 Here's the One.

And the Other One. 

 The orange one is for carving and the blue one is for looking at until after Thanksgiving and then I roast it and eat it. Blue pumpkins are the sweetest. Great for soup.

 

Don't you feel like you are in line to see a pumpkin concert? 

DK has been taking awesome pictures lately. Had to steal it.

So if Columbus Day is over, and my pumpkins are sitting happily on my fireplace hearth, that can only mean one thing:

IT'S BARN SALE SEASON!!!!

We are exactly one month out from the show. Nov 15-16 is the date for this year's event, so mark your calendars now. So much to do! 

And don't worry. I'll remind you of the date several more times before the show. 

There are 20 artists making cool stuff for you guys this year. I thought it might be fun for you all to meet a few of them in the next couple weeks. They may be a bit camera shy though, so you all might have to be content just looking in on their studios and taking a sneak peek at their stuff for the barn sale.

__________________________________________________________________________________

 Let's start with my new Vintage and Antiques dealer, Margaret Murnane.

Margaret Murnane is a woman of many lives. She works for the Army Corps of Engineers. She helped raise her husband, Jeff Jensen's five kids. She is currently helping him raise sheep and chickens and llamas on their small farm in Gainseville VA. And now she's becoming a vintage goods and antiques dealer. Asher Hill Farm is our purveyor of fine vintage goods and antiques for the Branches Barn Sale this year. (You can find links to our past shows here, here, here, and here)

I got to go climb around in the attic of Margaret's barn the other day and take a closer look at the goodies stashed up there.

Fun things like this sconce attached to a fence post abound here. 

And a four foot chandelier hanging from a tree in the front yard. So awesome!

And you have to go past the Chickens to get there. For some reason, I just really like chickens. I really don't know why. I used to be afraid of them after being pecked right in the belly button when I was four. But somewhere between four and forty, my navel and I got over it.

Margaret's attic full o' goodies is in her barn. You have to walk up a fairly steep staircase to get up there. I have no idea how she got all the stuff up there. But when you get to the top you see this:

And this:

 

And this:

 It's a magical place, full of mystery and wonderful things.

There are too many good things coming to show them all, but here are a few:

If you go down the gravel road a bit further, you come to what Margaret loving calls 
The Bed Shed.

This is one of TWO stacks of antique beds in the shed. Hence the name. 

Margaret's true passion is saving old rope tie beds.  (People have a hard time with rope tie beds because they usually require a smaller mattress than what most people are comfortable sleeping on. And the ropes have to be tightened frequently to keep the mattress supported.) She buys these unwanted head and foot boards and helps her husband Jeff recycle them into gorgeous benches that do suit modern lifestyles. 

Wanna see?

 

They use the head board for the back and then cut the foot board more or less in half for the arm rests. Fabulous, no? They just don't make stuff like this anymore.

 They had one in process while I was there. It was all built but needed to be sanded and painted. It's going to be a milky white.

 You can see how the various parts came together here. 

Here's a detail shot

Man, those spool details just kill me!

Here's the saw master, Jeff Jensen, working on another one. This one's gonna be more of a hall tree with hooks to hang hats and coats and baskets underneath for your shoes and mittens and backpacks.

You wanna hear something exciting? We get to sell these babies when they are all done! You know you are getting your measuring tape out right now to see if you have room.

But these guys don't just stop at cool vintage stuff and bed benches. 

They raise sheep and llamas. And then shear them annually.

While I was visiting, I got to meet Odin, their llama. Odin's main job to take care of the lambs, once they leave their moms. He does a great job of this. Plus he's cool and fluffy. I kept waiting for him to start talking with David Spade's voice. 

Wasn't it nice of him to pose so pretty for me?

 So they shear their sheep and then have the wool cleaned. Once all the chunks are out, they dye it themselves.

 Raw, dyed wool. It really is like sticking your hand into a technicolor cloud.

And then make the most gorgeous thread and rugs with the wool. 

 

This is the rug yarn, so it's larger and nubbier than regular thread.

 I didn't know people still did that. But trust me when I say that you want to touch it. So soft.

And you won't believe the colors it comes in. So. much. fun.

This is the regular size yarn.

 And as if the vintage and the bed benches and the yarn wasn't enough, they will also be selling honey from their hives. Yes, they are also apiarists. And it's good honey. 

Really good honey.

This wonderful photo by hbsmith designs is just a sneak peek of our promo pics for the show. I just got the pics back today and they are spectacular.

So that 's Asher Hill Farms. 

Yarn, honey, bed benches, and vintage goodies 

all coming your way in a month. 

BRANCHES Artisanal Barn Sale

open Nov 15-16, 9am -5pm

Held in the barn at Lynn Vale Studios 

4475 Sudley Rd, Gainesville VA 20155

See you there!

Celebrating Columbus Day at Mayne's Tree Farm

Here in Virginia, we get pretty excited about Christopher Columbus. I mean, he DID discover our continent. Well, maybe a little after Erik the Red.....and thousands of years after the Native Americans, but somehow, in Western European culture, he gets credit for the New World. Virginia thinks this is so cool, we get a holiday from school and work. In the middle of October.

source

 I have come to love this, as it gives us a day every year to appreciate how spectacular fall in Virginia truly is. And trust me. Spectacular is usually the word for it.

Source (Unfortunately this one isn't mine) 

This one isn't mine either. My husband took it though, so that makes it almost mine.

My family has developed the tradition of going to a pumpkin patch on a farm in Maryland every year to celebrate not being in school on Columbus day. More specifically, we head to Mayne's Tree Farm, in Buckeystown, MD. (Also home of Chartreuse and Company, my favorite of all the barn sales.)We have been doing this for about 15 years now. Al and I read about it in the Washington Post's list of fall activities soon after moving here from the West, and we have always come back. It really is that good.

Mayne's Tree Farm has that wonderful balance of then and now. There is a corn maze, and a moon bounce and other modern farm delights.

But there is also the beauty and simplicity that comes from just being a farm. You walk or take a hayride on a tractor bed to the pumpkin field. You walk out amongst the vines in acres of pumpkins to find just the right one.

 
After discovering a million that you want to take home, you look at your wallet, decide how much you really want to spend pumpkins, and buy all of them in your wheel barrow anyway, just because it is so stinkin' fun to be in a giant patch of pumpkin vines instead of at work or at school.

At some point your kids will notice the large bales of hay that they can climb on. Let them. This is super fun for some reason.

        
They will also notice the line of old tractors across the field from the parking lot. Let them run free over there and "drive" a real tractor for a while. They are full sized and make you feel very tall and farmery when you sit on them. Go on! Climb on up! You know you want to.

The corn maze is always fun, although there is an extra charge for it. It won't be as much as a lot of the other places though. The Maynes try really hard to keep their prices reasonable for families. We usually do it, and I always walk away with some wicked good black and white photos. Corn husks are an amazing back drop for kid's (and adult's) photos.

Especially B&W.

See how cute the corn maze makes me look? I think this may end up as my bio photo.

I have to say though, our favorite thing by far, other than the pumpkins themselves, is the mini pumpkin slingshot. They have a bucket set out in a field, and if you get your mini pumpkin in the bucket, they'll give you one of the giant pumpkins for free. You get three shots to do this. I think it cost $2 for the three shots this year.

We have never won yet, but someday, someday that huge pumpkin will be sitting on my doorstep for little Halloweeners to climb over if they want their candy.

Oh, I almost forgot. You MUST buy the apple cider. Just go for the gallon. If you only buy the half and then drive off before you try it, you will just end up going back for more anyway, so save yourself the gas and time and just buy the big one. Nectar. of. the. Gods. Seriously. Go get you some.

Mayne's Tree Farm also has year round activities. They have pick-your-own berries and produce in the summer. And as their name suggests, they are a Christmas tree farm. You and the family can go wander the fields until you find THE perfect tree. And their wreathes are amazingly low priced. Like think Home Depot pricing, for a way fresher, prettier wreath. Just check out their website for what's in season when. Here's the link again, just for the people standing in the back.

If you decide to go home the Point of Rocks way, by turning West on rt 85 (and this is recommended if you are a barn saler, as this puts you on the very road that goes in front of the Old Lucketts Store and On A Whim), you will pass another delight. Rocky Point Creamery. Now if you've never had farm fresh churned ice cream before, you really should stop. It has a texture like nothing else. it is closed on Mondays, but we just happened to stop while the owner was talking to some friends outside the building. He took pity on our car full of hungry kids and let us come in and buy whatever he had pre-served. On his day off. What a great guy. Thanks Mr. Fry!

And thus tuckered out with an abundance of country goodness, we drove back to Virginia, land of gratitude for the man who discovered "India."