I grew up around a bunch of horse farms. Not farm-horse farms, but million-dollar racing thoroughbreds farms.
One of them decided to have a farm camp. I chatted with the the owner, who I've known my whole life. She basically shrugged her shoulders and said, "Hell, whatever we can do to keep the farm." Her eldest son runs the camp, and he was having a frickin' ball.
The place where I grew up is a gorgeous place. Even the barns that are covered in poop are gorgeous.
My mom and I dropped off the kids and went shopping. It was blissful.
When we came back to pick up the kids, my mom went native. She just wanted to see the horses.
This sweet creature was just a couple weeks old.
The kids curried horses, milked cows, and patted the farm dog, Lady. The went down to the "gross green" lake and dug worms, fished, and caught frogs. They were delighted and disgusted when Lady went into the lake. They rode horses. Now, my kids have rode ponies before, but never have they rode horses after they mucked out the horse's stall.
They collected eggs, did some archery, and went swimming in a pool formed by hay bales with a tarp thrown over them.
Man, I hate my hometown. I got my behind out of there as soon as I could. But here's what I want for my kids' summer: frog-catching, stone-skipping, horse-riding.
If you are local, I highly recommend Cloverfield Farm Camp. This is absolutely no a paid endorsement. but heck, I hope to send the kids for a full week instead of a day next year. If they want to give me a discount, I'm open to it!
We went home. The boys and my dad went out digging in the compost pile.
Worms!
To the lake! Can you tell which one of these kids is mine on the float?
Now can you tell?
Everyone got to do a little bit of fishing with Sampi.
Lucy took this picture of me. I suspect Evan enjoyed this texted photo more than the scores of kids -n-fish ones he got previously, even though I look goofy. Boobies trump fishies.
Score!
The kids caught a half-dozen fish. Sunnies, Pumpkin seeds, perch, bass. Oscar went from not wanting touch a dead minnow to handling a live catch. My dad was super duper proud.
Oscar sent that pumpkinseed back to his buddies.
We went home and devoured a couple grilled steaks and rice-and-beans. The Goose is basically a vegetarian (really a crackertairian) but then Dad came home with actual Dykeman's corn, the arrival of which is a huge yearly event for locals. As much as I despise my hometown, I will go toe-to-toe with my sister in law and fight for NY corn versus NJ corn.
But the Goose didn't care. She devoured two ears of corn and ignored everything else on her plate. .
A real Pawling girl, right?
We had some thunderstorms that evening, and Oscar was interested in my need to be outside during the storm. I hate the humidity, but I love thunderstorms. Oscar didn't want to go to bed, so I told him that I used to like to sleep out on the porch during these evenings. And I have lived in New England, where they built "sleeping porches," screened in porches situated to catch a breeze. I spent many lovely evenings on my sleeping porch in Northampton.
Oscar spread out on the porch and conked out. I hung next to him in the hammock chair and balanced a glass of wine and watched Downton Abbey on my laptop.
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