Labor Day Weekend

Who doesn't love a three-day weekend? Cause the Aquila's certainly do! While Marc, his dad and his brother were busy working on our roof and chimney I made sure to take advantage of all the weekend events.

Yard Sale

On Saturday I headed over to Hanover for the Hanover/Dartmouth Community Yard Sale. Seeing as it was a community wide yard sale, I expected it to be a little larger then it was. Then again, for this area, it was pretty big. I was hoping to find a steal on a mirror or maybe some furniture for the baby's room. After wandering back and forth around the stalls I ended up purchasing a wooden toy train for $0.50. I'm not sure whether I'll paint it or just clean it up and leave it as is but right now it looks at home on our mantelpiece.

I always use guests as an excuse to bake and try out new recipes and this weekend was no different. I made some banana bread from the Sweet Melissa cookbook, onion strings from the Pioneer Woman, and some homemade bagels. It was the least I could do to reward the men for their hard work on our roof and chimney.

On Sunday I headed out to the Norwich Craft Fair. It's held at the same place where the Norwich Farmer's Market is held so I knew what to expect when I headed over. I wasn't really looking for anything specific, I just wanted to get out of the house and see what kind of items were for sale. There was jewelry, knit goods, wood cutting boards and pottery but nothing that caught my eye enough to purchase. Afterwards I drove around a little ended up finding a nice basket for $3.75 at the thrift store. I was hoping it would be big enough to put newspapers in for the wood stove but instead I think it will become a toy basket for the baby's room.

On Monday my friend Michelle, whom I've known since high school, came to visit. She was one of our first guests when we first moved out here in March so it was really great to be able to show her where we are now calling home. We took advantage of having a guest visit to head out to Riverview Farm for some blueberry picking.

This was Marc and my first trip to a pick your own farm. Upon arrival we ran into one of his coworkers and quickly found out that not only could we pick blueberries but there were also raspberries, apples and pumpkins ripe for picking. So after picking up some buckets to collect our goodies and smothering ourselves with sunblock we headed out to the fields.

Our first stop was the honeycrisp apples. We decided that to fuel ourselves up for an afternoon of fruit picking we should have an apple. We also wanted to make sure they were in fact ready to be picked on our way back from the blueberries. 

We spent most of our time picking blueberries. I think it was Michelle who commented something along the lines of "now I know why blueberries are expensive at the grocery store". Even though the bushes were full of berries it took some work to figure out which ones were ready to be picked and then some time to fill our buckets. Once we had had enough of blueberries we quickly filled our bags with apples and then went in search of raspberries.

The farm grows raspberries in three different areas. The farmer told us to head out to one area but after a fruitless search to find that area we ended up following the painted signs to the raspberries. Sadly a lot of the bushes had been picked over so there weren't too many for us to gather. Growing up my family had raspberries in our backyard and I had forgotten how wonderful they taste fresh from the bush and warm from the sun. We ended up gathering about a cup of raspberries and then headed back to the "office" to pay up and also purchase some apple cider. 

Sadly for me the cider was unpasteurized which meant it wasn't safe for the baby but from what I hear, and what I smelled, it was delicious. It was definitely a great day to be out in the sunshine and we're so glad that Michelle came to visit us and join us on this adventure. We will definitely be going back next year, if not later in the season for other types of apples.