It was an awesome Turkey day! Sam, BB, Delayne and I farmsat on Whidbey Island and Rita and Ben came out friday evening for to cookandNOM!
Mmmm…
Quite an eventful holiday.. The three goats(Merriment, Snow Princess and Chardonnay-or as the kids call them: Butt Goat, Nice Goat and Starved Goat) turned out to be quite skillful escape artists and so we spent quite a bit of time rounding them up and juryrigging the gate shut so that Merriment(Butt Goat) couldn’t eat ALL the hay.
Not to mention calming the hyper young german shepherd, Savannah(and cleaning up poop-not my favorite part). She spends much of her time locked in the laundry room, so she’s VERY ENTHUSIASTIC when let out. Luckily, our group included some avid dog fans, so she was well taken care of, even if she did still spend much of her time watching(~pantwhinepant~) the ladder for the poor cat which hardly ever comes downstairs, except to make a mad dash for the kitchen loft where her food is.
The kids had a great time feeding the chickens(Rowan practically adopted them) and ducks and we all enjoyed wrangling the goats and petting Velvet, the donkey, who seemed a bit depressed this time around.
It was lovely to get ‘lost’ in the forest, which is honeycombed with paths to yurts and cabins and farmsteads. We also took a day trip out the Double Bluff Beach and there was much sliding down bluffs,
log walking, admiring clay bastions, stacking rocks(on Delayne’s part) and I made a very odd cliff creature in the sand/clay/sandstone bluff. Most of the oddness due to the act that the head I was carving kept shifting and falling off. 
Oh well, it was fun.
Our feast was splendid and abundant. We had turkey, stuffing, mashed ‘taters, Rita’s amazing juiced orange sweet potatoes, cider…
(possibly a little too much cider?)
garden pumpkin and Ben’s delicious gravy(made at the risk of his life and to the detriment of his pants).
Dessert was a most delicious triple berry pie that Delayne and I found at a sweet bakery in Langley. He and I had a lovely little browse in an amazing import store there. They have gorgeous rugs, bizarrely cool hats, exquisite gemstone jewelry and these ginormous chairs carved from whole old growth tree trunks-all smooth oiled wood loveliness. I absolutely lOVE them. If I had a few extra thousand smackers, I’da brought one home for sure. As it was, I rang every bell in the place and brought three of the sweet little ones home. Amazing, hand beaten metal bells from India-they all have different tones and I chose the sweetest three of all the little ones.
Aaaaaaaaaah, such a marvelous time. More pics of farmy goodness and all our adventures here.
I’m so lucky to have such brizilliant friends and family.
