Fall Festival at Wolfe's Neck Farm

On Saturday, October 12, we  took Mattimeo to the Fall Festival at Wolfe's Neck Farm. Because I am feeling lazy currently (I think this is allowed when you are 35 weeks pregnant), I am just going to copy the description of the festival from the website, and then I'll share what we did.

Join us on our oceanfront nonprofit farm as we celebrate sustainable agriculture and the beauty and bounty of autumn in Maine! This wholesome family festival features activities and demonstrations, live music, haybale climbing, face painting, animal interactions, tasty local food and more. We run our Pumpkin Hayrides during the festival - take a tractor ride out to our pumpkin patch and pick your favorite pumpkin.

ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS
Great family-friendly activities including apple pressing, art and craft activities, face painting, pumpkin decorating and more. Little ones love our haybale climb, tractor climb and the haybale maze in our animal barn

MEET THE ANIMALS
Wolfe's neck farm has an array of farm animals including sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys and our newest additions: young Guinea Hogs that we're raising in partnership with Miyake! We'll also have visiting alpacas from Abbott Farm in Cumberland.

DEMONSTRATIONS
We'll have demonstrations on composting, seed-saving, spinning, beekeeping, food preservation and more! Shift Sustainable Home Goods will demonstrate waste reduction and Garbage to Garden will demonstrate food composting.

LIVE MUSIC
We'll have live music, with special appearances from Roger Tincknell, Matt Loosigian and Rick Charette.

GREAT LOCAL FOODS
We're looking forward to locally-sourced sweet and savory crepes by Enchanted Kitchen, a selection of tasty local foods from Portside Picnic and Maine Shore Lobster Bakes, vegan smoothies and kale chips from Kids Gone RAW, local beverages from Green Bee Soda and more!

Mattimeo was VERY excited about going to the festival. Mostly he was excited to see cows and chickens, and had been asking to see them all week. It was a gorgeous morning, and we began by stopping to admire the sheep out grazing in the field as we walked to the farmyard.

Next we went to check out the two visiting alpacas.  The brown one was especially soft. I'm actually not sure I ever felt an animal as soft as she was, I bet her yarn is amazing!

Next, we visited the beekeeping table. Mattimeo loves to watch the bees when we go to Gilsland Farm, so he was really excited to look at the bees and tell the beekeeper that they were making honey.

They set up this great big pile of haybales for the kids to climb up and play on. Meo really enjoyed this and climbed all the way to the top a couple times throughout the day. It was fun to see him giggle and try to interact with the other children; it was sad when one of the bigger kids pushed him off. Jerk.

We decided to be festive and let Meo have his face painted for the very first time. He got to look at a page of different paintings and choose what he wanted. He ended up choosing an apple. I couldn't believe how cooperative and still he was while the woman painted his face; he did such a great job!

Naming the different paintings

At this point, Meo was really hankering to see some cows, so we went into the barn to visit the animals.

We visited the cows, who were very friendly, but Meo preferred to look and not touch.

One of his favorite activities was running around with the chickens trying to feed them some of their food and pet their feathers. He was really gentle about it, which is good, it was just so funny to see his face all lit up as a squealed in delight.

On our way out of the barn, Mattimeo attempted his very first straw maze. It was pretty crazy in there, as there was a lot of children running around and kept almost knocking a bewildered Meo over. But he was a trooper and really tried to find his way out, testing out all sorts of directions. In the end he got a little worried and started yelling that he wanted Dada, so Robbie scooped him up from over the fence when he got close enough.

Outside of the barn, Robbie and Meo sat at a craft table and made a little pumpkin together.

I was getting really hungry at this point, so we went to visit a few more animals outside while Robbie waited in line to get some food.

Visiting Daddy in the food line

He kept making this ridiculous "bulldog" face all day...I think he's teething again

We pet the draft horses

Meo thought it was hillarious when the turkeys all gobbled.

For lunch, Robbie had a felafel burger and Meo and I shared a maccaroni and cheese as well as some french fries. I also got a lemon sting soda from Green Bee Soda, which is made from a couple of guys from Maine; it was delicious! We sat under a giant tent and listened to a Rick Charette Concert while we enjoyed our yummy local food. Rick Charette was around back when I was a kid, and I have fond memories of going to his concerts when I was in school. I especially like the song "I Love Mud" and he sang it for me while we ate; so cool (and yes, I said for me because I requested that he play it on his facebook page the night before and he said that he was playing it for me hehe)! It was fun to be able to share his music with my little Meo.

After lunch, we decided to wait in line to go on a hayride out the pumpkin patch. During this wait, Meo asked Robbie to take him over to see the cow having a bath, which was another of his favorite activities of the day. I think we went to go check out the cows having bathes three times. One time I helped wash, but Meo wasn't interested in soaping the cow up, he just really enjoyed seeing them be cleaned.

"Here comes the tractor!"

Meo simply adored his first hayride. He really just loved everything about it.

Almost 35 weeks pregnant now

Once we arrived at the pumpkin field a very excited Meo ran off to find his pumpkin. We told him he would be able to "pick one out himself" and he repeated that the whole hayride over. He was so cute running around picking up different pumpkins to show us. In the end, we helped him to find a largish pie pumpkin so we could actually use it later to make some pumpkin pie.

At this point, we were planning on just walking to the car, which was closer to the pumpkin field than the barn. But Meo was so excited to go back on the tractor and then to see the cow have a bath and run with the chickens one more time, that we couldn't refuse. So onto the tractor we went.

So we said good-bye to the cows, good-bye to the chickens, and even got a wet good-bye nuzzle from the little guniea hogs before heading back to the car.

I knew that there would be lots of things at the festival that Mattimeo would enjoy, but I had no idea that he would love it as much as he did. We simply had a fantastic day and I am sure Meo will continue to talk about all the fun things he did and saw for weeks to come. It looks like we found a new annual family tradition!

Passed out after a fun day on the farm