Poem for Monday and Frederick Farm Festival

Daybreak in a Garden
By Siegfried Sassoon

I heard the farm cocks crowing, loud, and faint, and thin,
When hooded night was going and one clear planet winked:
I heard shrill notes begin down the spired wood distinct,
When cloudy shoals were chinked and gilt with fires of day.
White-misted was the weald; the lawns were silver-grey;
The lark his lonely field for heaven had forsaken;
And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of may,
And touched the nodding peony-flowers to bid them waken.

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Sunday's weather was as glorious as Saturday's, meaning that Frederick's Family Festival @ the Farm took place on the perfect weekend. After Adam was done working at Hebrew school, we picked up him and my mother and went to five farms. The first was one we'd never visited before, Flying Goat Farm, which raises angora goats and many happy free-range chickens. Then we went to Whispering Meadows, which primarily raises alpacas, though there are also cows, angora rabbits, and currently some adorable kittens. Then we went to a place that's new to the tour, Catoctin Creek Farm, which raises sheep with award-winning wool, followed by South Mountain Creamery, which is always very crowded on festival days and has other local vendors like some of the Boonsboro Days folk. We ended up at Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch, which was also pretty crowded, so after seeing the animals and some of the crafts, we decided we'd get our Halloween pumpkins closer to home.


This angora goat at Flying Goat Farm apparently thinks it's a mountain goat.


There were many chickens in acres of fields and hiding in the asparagus. We have a dozen of their eggs.


This little brown alpaca at Whispering Meadows, seen with his mother, is only eleven days old.


Adam bonded with one of the kittens living on the farm.


Fall color was in evidence in the treetops at Catoctin Creek Farm.


Visitors at South Mountain Creamery could give the calves bottles.


Three sleepy piggies at Jumbo's ignored the goats and birds eating their food.


And the clouds were spectacular.

We listened to the Redskins' dismal outing against the Eagles on the radio while driving around, and watched most of the Ravens-Texans game when we got home. Adam was summoned by his friends for pizza and My Little Pony for a few hours so Paul and I had dinner and watched the first episode of Case Histories by ourselves. Mysteries aren't really my thing, even well-written, restrained British mysteries where gory recreations of crimes aren't the emphasis, though Jason Isaacs is wonderful in it, as is the guest cast (Fenella Woolgar, Phil Davis); I just always find them depressing and don't quite believe that people crack open and incriminate themselves so easily to a kindly P.I.