Saturday after sleeping in a bit, we went for a walk down the rail trail to our friend's place a mile down the road on Saturday and were treated to amazing gooey gluten free brownies and fresh watermelon. We came back to Farm #1 and had a rapture party, including a turkey dinner (that was raised by my hosts last fall... and was so delicious!). Lots of drinks (Dan makes amazing cocktails that have spoiled us for drinks at bars!), lots of amazing food and lovely people. The wonderful thing about starting a party around 4 is that people with kids can leave early and the rest of us who remain can spend the evening playing boardgames!
Sunday morning A managed to wrangle us all to get to the Dorset farmer's market around 10am, when it opens. Being at the market when it first opens is great, all the produce is fresh and beautiful, and being in a small town we inevitably ran into like 3 people who we had just seen at the party the night before! After some breakfast, we checked out the Merck Forest & Farmland Center and saw some baby chickens, pigs and lambs.
The baby lambs were my favorite! I would have liked to get in there and pet them but it wasn't set up in a way that invited petting. As we were leaving Merck Forest, we passed their new sugaring house. Our hostess used to work there and told us all about the maple sugaring process. The sugaring house itself was also interesting to look at. As soon as we walked in I was examining the joinery (I miss timberframing!) and it seemed like an odd structure, the ridge beam was very small, the rafters of the roof were resting on post that were smaller than the roof support, there were lap joints on top of the posts, metal connections in the beams and the peak of the roof overlapped. It turns out that the building was not designed by an architect, it was kind of thrown together by someone who kind of knew what they were doing but clearly not enough. Vermont is neat because of it's lack of building codes, but it seems like it should be required for a public building to be signed off on at least by an engineer! There are crazy snow and wind loads up in these beautiful mountains! The building didn't pass inspection and had to be retro fitted, hence the extra supports tied in with metal.
All that talk about maple syrup I couldn't wait to get back to the house and have some :) We came back to the farm and had a lovely dinner prepared by M&A with fixings from the farmer's market. For dessert we had maple marshmallows I'd made Friday... topped with a little maple syrup and crumbled bacon that had been purchased at the morning's market. It was... interesting. The sweetness of the maple and the saltiness of the bacon and the two textures... it was interesting. not bad, but not something I'd eat on a regular basis! No regrets for trying it anyhow :)
Now it is Monday, M&A are getting ready (slowly... long night of gaming last night!) to head back to Brooklyn, then I will get back to work on rebuilding the trailer (which is painted! Now I get to use saws and drills... way more fun than painting!) and building the compost sifter... busy week! Then I'll be off to Portland, ME where I am looking forward to some fabulous restaurants and catching up with a friend from back in the day.
