The Farmer in the Dell

We spent the weekend at East Hill Farm with some friends, some toddlers, and about 70 square-dancing senior citizens. We had an absolute blast and if wishes were horses (what does that mean, anyway?).. we'd be buying a farm near Monadnock Mountain.

We had planned to meet up with Snickollet/Ya-Yas at about 8:45 a.m. on Saturday morning. That didn't exactly go as planned. Yes, I know.. big surprise. I was up until about 1:30 a.m. on Saturday watching friggin Ghost Hunters.. scaring myself silly. I finally gave up and woke Shiela up so we could go to bed (with all of the lights on). I was ALMOST asleep at about 2:30 a.m. when Ben started babbling in his room. Babbling quickly turned to fussing which turned to screeching. The following 3 hours are a bit fuzzy, but I know that it involved some time in moms' bed, some time with mom and ben on the twin bed in Ben's room.. and some time twitching and trying to open the damned Advil container to minimize the damage that several handfuls of chocolate and no sleep was having on my head. Somewhere around 4:30-5:30... Ben fell asleep.

Shiela ended up calling Snick to let her know that we would be meeting them at the farm. oops!

We piled into the car and had a lovely drive up to Troy, NH. When we got there, we knew that the weekend would be a hit. Ben was giggling and jumping before we even got out of the "parking lot". We checked in.. got a tour, where we caught up with Snick and crew, and then went on a hayride.

There were a number of things that I loved about this place. Aside from the fact that we were out in a beautiful area during a beautiful time of year and all that jazz.. the place had no cell service. This would normally make me twitch.. but every once in a while it is REALLY nice to just unplug. There weren't even phones in the room. It was like camping on a cruise. Hard to explain. They fed us constantly and it was all inclusive.. but get this.. when we went outside after dark.. you could see these lights in the sky.. and they weren't planes! stars, i tell ya! stars! ...and cows!



Ok.. our "room" had several rooms, in fact. We were on the second floor of an old farmhouse. We had our own porch that was screened in and then two big rooms with plenty of seating area and lots of drawers and cabinets for an inquiring 22 month old. The bathroom was HUGE (and VERY clean.. i love the farm thing and all.. but seriously.. i'm a city girl. i really prefer not to "rough it"..)

Ben really enjoyed the full length mirrors. I, unfortunately, had just come off of an evening where I watched 6.5 hours of Ghost Hunters and I admit.. the mirrors creeped me out a bit. I put that aside and just pretended that they weren't there.



This morning, we woke up at about 8 a.m. With the time change, that made it 7.. we're SO lucky to have a child that sleeps so well (um.. except when we dupe him full of candy and run around in costumes and then expect him to settle down and sleep.. pah!). Anywho.. Ben snuggled up with his tippy of "wa-wa" (milk), a blanket and a truck. It you look close.. you'll see that his angelic little face ran into a bit of bad luck on Saturday. It actually ran right into the pavement. The little dude tripped while running on the basketball court (why does a farm have a hoop, anyway!) and went sliding on his face across the asphalt. Fun. Bloody nose.. road rash on his forehead.. good times.



We met up with the Ya-Yas (Maddie and Riley) and crew in the dining room where we had a wonderful breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes (no.. not for Ben.. for ME!!!) and oatmeal and a banana and yogurt and an omelet and scrambled eggs (that came from the chickens in the barn!). It was all "family style" and felt sort of like yelling "hey ma.. i want pancakes.." and then getting a pile of pancakes.. Fun!

When we finished up at breakfast, Ben, Shiela and I took a bag of day-old bread out to feed some of the animals. Ben REALLY enjoyed feeding the goats. This is the only photo that I got because we were too busy making sure that the goals weren't going to bite him or something.. we watch America's Funniest Videos, afterall.. we KNOW what can happen! Luckily, aside from the basketball court incident.. the weekend was accident and incident free!



This weekend the farm hosted an annual convention of square dancers. The kids absolutely LOVED watching the dancing. As a result of the scheduling, there wasn't a ton of families there.. needless to say, the 4 children under the age of 2.5 made quite the impression with the 50+ senior citizens. At one point, about 8 women were calling "Benjamin" in sing-songy voices while trying to snap a photo of Ben.. it weirded him out. I don't blame him. The good thing was that he could easily outrun any of them. We basically had the run of the place and it was nice having the time, and space, for Ben to explore and run. The picture below.. hard to see.. he's the blue thing down near the end of the animal pens.







After breakfast we all split up for a bit with the older kids going for pony rides and we headed back to our room for a little rest. We met back up with the rest of our herd of toddlers at lunchtime, where they were serving a Turkey Dinner. Seriously. How wonderful is this place!?! I was tempted to ask if I could join the family. Anyway.. they fed us well...







[we had another little girl with us, but I am pretty rabid about not posting pictures without getting specific permission first.. trust me.. she was a cutie!]

The weekend was a great success and we plan to visit the farm again (possibly with all of our belongings and two cats in tow.) The wonderful turkey dinner put all four toddlers well past their naptime. Meltdowns were imminent. After Riley fell asleep sitting up in his highchair, our friends decided to head home. We stuck around for some desert (yum!) and then packed up into the car and started our drive home. Ben was asleep within about 5 minutes and I was asleep shortly thereafter.



Ben was VERY happy to get home. He ran around the house checking to be sure his toys were all in the correct spots and wasted no time finding the remote control to ask for Thomas. Since he went the weekend with no Thomas.. we snuggled up on the couch to watch an episode!

Benjamin had a scrambled egg for dinner. We "picked" one egg from the hen house while we were at the farm. We had planned to get.. oh.. i don't know.. more like 2 or 3, but we hit the barn right after breakfast and all of the square-dancers had already snagged most of the eggs! Here is our egg...



And yes... I microwaved it.