Memorial Day Madness

The animals on the farm don’t take vacations, or holidays. Every day seems mostly like the day before and the day after, unless we get visitors to the farm. What a change from the same old people with the same old feed and grazing in the same old grass.

On Memorial Day, as we give tribute to those who serve, we took a break from the normal farm activities. We invited one of my writing groups to have a class and enjoy the day with fellowship and good food.  We filled the house during the morning hours with the writing part before having a good meal including bounty from the farm.

The garden was able to supply the crowd with fresh greens for salads, pea pods, onions, chives, spinach and radishes. Toasted walnuts from last fall were added to the salad as were marinated chanterelle mushrooms from the forest. We served BBQ beef, and elk sausage that came from the hunting season. Dessert, was of course, strawberry shortcake, the berries had been picked just that morning.

The afternoon was spent giving tours of the farm and showing off the animals, the garden, our tree harvest system and the river that flows through the middle of it all.

By evening time, the animals seemed confused when their dinner consisted of the same old me puttering around in the barn without any extra humans or loud chatter. Once the sweet hay was in front of them, they were content that the madness was over, until the next time.