Harvest Festivals

Weekends are wonderful and nothing quite compares to a weekend in the fall.  In The American Notebooks, Nathanial Hawthorne wrote, “I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house."  So we made sure to be out and about this weekend at the "autumnal sunshine" was glorious.  After work on Friday we headed out to a park that is a few miles out of town and one of our favorite places to be outdoors if we have the time to drive out there.  I went running and Arthur walk through the nature trails.  It was 'golden hour'-- a photography term for the hour right before sunset when the light is softer and casts longer shadows.  It also gives a golden tinge to everything the light touches.  After enjoying the last few moments of daylight we came home to the delicious smell of a cider-glazed ham that had been cooking in the crock pot all day and settled in for a cozy evening.
Saturday morning I went out on my run first thing and it was pretty chilly, maybe even a hint of frost on the roof tops.  But it was going to be a clear day for the rest of our plans-- I think it needs to be mandatory that great fall weather is not wasted on workdays but saved for weekends when it can be thoroughly enjoyed.  We were headed to the Hildebrand Dairy Farms.  They were having their fall harvest festival so we stopped and got a tour of the farm.  We have switched to drinking their milk this past year but hadn't been to the farm yet.  They currently have a herd of 150 cows that they milk twice a day.  We got to tour the milking parlor and the production plant where they pasteurize and bottle the milk before they ship it to grocery stores state-wide.  Another stop was checking out the barns for the cows and another one for the calves.  We learned that cows will produce milk best at temperatures below 65F so they don't really mind winter.  The fat content in the milk also changes throughout the year too.  Additionally, the taste of milk changes depend on at what temperature the pasteurization process occurs.  In a world where food production involving animals sometimes gets a bad rap it was good to see first-hand how the farm works.  They aren't a large scale dairy with thousands of cows but the health and well-being of the cattle was really important.  For example, you could look at the calves but not close enough to touch them just to make sure the calves don't get sick since they still have developing immune systems.  Everything the cows are fed is also grown right there on the farm.  Like the majority of family farms, these animals are their livelihoods so caring for the animals well is of utmost importance.  It was also fun for us to see firsthand how buying this milk does allow a family farm in our area to continue as a small family farm.  After the tour we got to taste-test some of their products.  Their newest milk flavor is mocha milk-  a mix of ice brewed coffee and their chocolate milk.  We aren't coffee drinkers but I enjoyed this flavor combination.  It was either grown-up chocolate milk or kid-friendly coffee.  They also had some beef sausages, butter, and cheeses.

Next we ventured on to meet my parents and 4 year old niece to visit the Lazy T Ranch outside of Manhattan that was having fall activities.  The ranch is owned by one of my dad's fraternity brothers from college.  There were lots of fun "farm" activities for kids that my niece loved-- petting some of the farm animals, playing on the big round hay bales, sliding into a stock tank full of corn, and using a hand pump to race rubber duckies down guttering to another stock tank.  Arthur and I enjoyed hiking up to the scenic overlook and looking across the river valley. We also all took a carriage ride around the farm and through the areas of native grass with Pete the horse. Other activities on the ranch included 3 weddings that afternoon.  It would be a beautiful location for an outdoor wedding but Arthur and I don't want to go through that again.
After we had thoroughly worn out our niece we took her back home and she even asked to take a nap that afternoon.  Arthur was headed to the K-State football game that evening with my brother.  It seems like whenever they watch a K-State game together the outcome is not ideal.  This time the score was favorable at the end but Arthur apparently had a few displays of fan rage so we will see if my brother invites him again. I hung out with my sister-in-law and held our new nieces who are a few months old now and cuter every day.  To cap off the fall activities for the day the four year old and I worked on carving a pumpkin.  She was less than enthusiastic about helping me pull out the guts but she did a great job of poking out the chunks of pumpkin when I got them loose.
To steal a line for Anne of Green Gables, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?" October is such a wonderful time for harvest festivals, carving pumpkins, and football games.  Omnia Vincit Amor.