I Can’t Pull The Wool Over Your Eyes

Ah!  At last one of my favorite days of the year.  The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival http://www.sheepandwool.org/.  Now I’ve posted about this lovely little event in the past but just in an “I went and bought my tomatoes at the Sheep and Wool Festival.  What a geek!” kind of way.  SO this year I’ll give you a little more detail.  This year the lucky dragees were some dear friends and my cousin Rebekah and her husband, Kyle.  Dragees, sadly, usually end up carrying a child, a pack of tomatoes and/or a Hulk size lemonade.

I’m going to digress this time and just tell you about our wonderful day and what you should do when you visit the Festival next year.   In the next couple days I’ll post about the tomatoes that will be joining us this year.

Your first stop will be the Thorne Farm stand www.thornefarm.com.

Their tomato plants are divine and they are so helpful and knowledgeable.  An added bonus?  I see they have a blog as well, which I will be checking out. And you may want to as well http://www.thornefarm.blogspot.com/ . They are the reason so many unsuspecting friends and family have been waiting in line with us to get into a sheep and wool festival. 

It will be a hot one so the only logical solution?  A lemonade.  A huge lemonade.  A lemonade that won’t even fit in the cup holders of your stroller.  There is something wonderful about a lemony drink with crystallized sugar in the bottom.

Next, you stop at the lamb concession stand even though it is only 10:30 a.m.  You stop because it is so yummy and you’ve seen the lines at noon before.  You stop even though a few feet away are live sheep smelling the cooking juices of their brethren.  You don’t care.

And because you have no shame, after your little luncheon you do walk through the sheep barns.  You will ooh and aah over the tiny little lambs as well as marvel over how soft yet oily their wool is.  You will watch your cousin commune with the sheep because, after all, you both are from Michigan and it is expected that you have some knowledge of sheep husbandry.

Finally, you will have had enough of bra-less women, wool skeins, the sun beating down on you and will want to get back to your home to start planning where all the tomatoes will go.  Your child will beg you for an ice cream, which if the most fitting end to a lovely morning.