The day began with eight ladies and two babies at Outstanding Dreams alpaca farm. Levi and
Liam (the babies) had a great time gallivanting with the alpacas, although Liam
was not happy that Meghan wouldn’t let him down to crawl around the pasture. Babies
+ alpacas = cutest ever.
The alpacas were so soft that I had to buy some fiber at the
farm store… so I guess I need to learn how to knit/crochet. The girls tried to convince me to get some alpacas (you can raise up to 10
on a single acre). I think that we need to buy siding more than a $5,000 animal
– those adorable critters are expensive!
I stole some of these photos from the Caroline County
Tourism page on Facebook. Our buddy Christina (who works for the tourism board) took us to
the alpaca farm and the place with the crazy outhouse guy who is obsessed with
hoes.
Now on to Shore Good farms. The owner Jack is born and bred
Caroline County. Jack loves his hoes and outhouses, but his real passion is to use his farm to educate kids about growing vegetables and gardening. He has a large amount of
acreage on his farm, but the part that we visited is farmed strictly by
hand. Jack can hoe his entire farm in 16 minutes.
Here is a blurb from the agritourism website:
Take a
step back in time to Shore Good Farm, a heritage farm located in Preston. Shore
Good Farm highlights Caroline County’s rich agrarian history, featuring an
unmatched collection of antiques and heritage artifacts from yesteryear,
fresh-cut flowers, artisan carpentry including vintage outhouses and chicken
coops, the plumpest blackberries on the shore, old-fashioned kettle corn and
more! Jack Stieff also runs his peanut roasting operation on the farm,
offering 15 varieties of his signature peanuts.
We all became 12 year old girls when he started talking
about the proper way to hoe a garden. He told us that all you need to grow
vegetables is a small area of land and a good hoe. Now, lots of people tend to
use big hoes, but Jack likes to use small hoes. You’ve got to make sure that
you keep your hoe in the ground. He showed off his mother’s hoe and had all of
us take turns holding it. “Yep, that’s a light hoe.” Cue us giggling like little
girls and making “Your mom’s a hoe” comments.
Jack is a purveyor of moonshine and tall tales. He doesn’t trust
the government and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on Doomsday Preppers someday.
Here he is greeting us when we pulled up – we caught him in
the outhouse, of course:
Some more pics at Shore Good Farm:
Sadly, the blackberries weren’t ripe enough to be picked,
because as Jack said, “That Mother Nature is a hussy!”
We’re planning to go back after Mother Nature wises up and
cooperates with Jack. I’m looking forward to talking to him about his chicken
feed. He makes his own and according to him, he gets 14 eggs a day out of his
10 chickens. Tall tales, indeed.
We found ourselves famished and thirsty after the farm
visits, so we headed to The Market Street Pub for
some deliciousness. I was too hungry to take any pictures of our food, but I
did snap a shot of our Orange Crush pitcher.
After the pub, we bid adieu to Meghan, Sherye, and their
babies and headed over to Black Anchor Tattoo to
get some work done. Sara now has Harry Potter stars behind her ear, Jamie got a
peace sign behind her ear (there was a DUDE – SWEET moment at the tattoo shop,
which was hilarious), Angela has a gorgeous pattern going down her spine inspired
by wrought-iron gates, and I now have this (inspired by my dad's photo on the right):
It looks pretty gross in that photo, because it was newly
finished - irritated and weeping. I’ll post another photo when it has healed. I have to say that it
hurt way more than I remembered tattoos hurting, and it took a little over two hours! After the
first minute I was thinking, “I wonder if it’s too late to get him to stop.” I’m very glad that Angela ended up getting
her back done at the same time, because it was nice to have someone to suffer
with. Sara and Jamie’s tattoos were done in no more than 15
minutes. Lucky girls.
I still have to get the Sagan quote added. I didn’t like the
layout that the shop did with the words going through the butterfly's wings, so I’m going to go back once it’s healed and
figure out a way that we can work in the quote around the tattoo or maybe to the side somewhere.
After
tattoos we went to Harry's on the Green for
some tasty drinks, plus delicious fried pickles and green beans.
As if all of that fun wasn’t enough, we also had book club on
Friday night. Wine, cheese, and tasty noms. It didn’t go as late as usual, probably because the book (Still
Life by Joy Fielding) was awful and most of us were exhausted from our busy
day.
Saturday brought more shenanigans at the 2nd
annual Southern Summer Cocktail party and we also got a bushel of crabs on
Sunday. It was a crazy fun and busy weekend and now I am completely worn out.
I can’t wait for a 7 p.m. bedtime this evening!
