My Day Off

Picture 1  Lake Dunmore from Branbury Beach 

Picture 2 The school bus that came to tour today

Picture 3 The bracelet I made today

I set no alarm, but I woke up at 5:45 this morning.  I am just programmed now, after only a week.  So I forced myself to go back to sleep until 7:30, and then I got up.  It was so cold this morning!  I bundled up and refused to go downstairs until about 10.  

I heard this weird, completely out of context noise this morning.  It was the sound of a school bus stopping right below my window.  I looked out the window and found, to my relief, that I was not absolutely insane, and there was a big yellow school bus outside the barn.  It turns out that a class from a school in Brandon (a town about 15 minutes away) was taking a field trip to our farm!  I creepily opened the window and watched.  After I ate lunch outside (mmmm...salad) (i'm like Homer Simpson, but healthier), I saw in the distance and long line of mini vans and SUVs coming down the road towards us.  It was weird because the road we're on doesn't really get any traffic and it's mostly trucks.  And then they all turned into our driveway and Hannah was like, "Oh, there's the other tour!"  It was a large group of adults from Boston who were taking a class about cheese, and they'd come all the way up here to tour Blue Ledge Farm.  I thought it odd that Hannah hadn't told me about the tours coming, but it turned out that she hadn't told Greg either...which was funny/unfortunate because he actually had to show them all around the cheese house.  

Can't think of a way to segue gracefully into my next topic, but whatever...

I brought lots of embroidery floss with me to Vermont in hopes that I would make bracelets and then sell them at the farmer's market, but so far I hadn't felt motivated to make any.  Today, my lack of anything else to do inspired me to pick up my scissors and thread.  I watched "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (remember that movie?  it's still really good) and made a bracelet (see picture above).  (Wow, I use parentheses to a ridiculous extent.)  At this point, I was like, WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE I'M IN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE EVER AND I AM TOTALLY FREE AND YET I'M SITTING AROUND WATCHING MOVIES ABOUT CRAZY GREEK PEOPLE AND MAKING BRACELETS!  

So I asked Hannah and Greg where I should go and they suggested Branbury Beach.  It's on Lake Dunmore, in Branbury State Park.  It's in between Brandon and Salisbury, so they named in Branbury...clever.  It's actually quite close, maybe 15 minutes, although it took me about 30 to get there because I went north instead of south on Rt. 7...silly me.  I got there and it was soooo beautiful.  It's right at the foot of the mountains, and it's not really a beach, just a grassy park with benches and then the water starts.  The best part is that there's a swing set.  That sounds like a non sequitur, but it's not.  Imagine that you have this spectacular view.  And then you can SWING while looking at it!  It makes it twice a good.

Cute story about the kittens:  At some point this morning, I decided to go and play with the kittens.  A mother and daughter pair of cats had kittens at the same time, and they're co-parenting!  They have two different little nooks, one at either end of the barn.  I went to go sit with one mother and four of the five kittens at one end of the barn, and while I'm there, the other mother comes up, grabs a little black kitten by the scruff of its neck, and starts dragging her off to the other end of the barn.  By the time I leave, there are only two kittens left with me.  They're so cute though!  4 of them are mainly black, but one is excitingly orange.  And they all have blue eyes, just like human babies.