Luckily, we listened to the wise words of Junior. See, we caravaned to Ferncol (in Templeton MA) with my sister and parents to the fair. We should have left a little earlier than we did, but you know how we get when we’re trying to go somewhere. It’s impossible to actually physically get in the car and go. There are many bathroom trips, someone forgot a sweater, someone forgot a bottle of water, maybe one more bathroom trip, get off the computer, dammit! (That wasn’t me, by the way) etc. etc.
As we got off the Route 2 exit, it started to rain. FANTASTIC! A conference between the open windows of the two cars occurred. Do we want to go in or not? It’s five dollars per car. What’s the forecast for the afternoon? Junior says we should go, that it’s going to stop raining. It doesn’t look that way, but that’s what he said. Someone points out that all the profit from the fair goes right back into the program at Ferncol, and in fact it rained yesterday so they didn’t make much money. (Example: If you go on the dairy barn tour, they have cookies and ice cream and apple cider available. Free, but there is a donation jar. I have found you tend to donate more than you would if they were actually charging for the snacks, which I suppose is why they do it. All the money that is donated goes to the client/resident holiday party. How can you not give a few bucks to that worthy cause?) So we decided minimally, we’d go, give our five bucks as a donation and just turn around. Except the rain let up a LOT so we got out. And after an initial drizzle it didn’t rain again the rest of the time we were there – in fact the skies cleared and there were patches of blue. So Junior called it! I’m going to get all my weather predictions from him from now on!
The fair was smaller this year. I guess Saturday was a complete washout and with the forecast for Sunday to be the same or worse (thunderstorms and 60mph winds) many of the vendors weren’t there on Sunday. They didn’t have carnaval rides this year (I was perfectly okay with that. I did NOT like the quality of the rides when I saw them last year) and they didn’t have the big Dollar Sale section (which was usually just boxes of stuff on the ground). I did share my fricot (chicken stew) with Junior, and my parents had the traditional clam chowdah. They said it was just as good as previous years.
No cows were born, but the manager of the dairy is the guy who led our tour so he thought it was cool that we said we were there when it happened a couple of years ago. It’s fair lore that one year a cow gave birth during the fair. And I have photographic evidence!
Good for you, Jody. We were going to go to Bolton yesterday after church, but the forecast scared me. We went out to Sunday dinner instead. Sounds like a nice fair. I’ll have to check it out next year — if it doesn’t rain.
PS Those calf being born pictures? Amazing.
Well crap, we should have waived. We were there from about 1 – 3 on Sunday, and hid in our car eating cotton candy while it tried to rain. We just moved to Templeton and live about 10 minutes down the road!
Glad to hear it’s normally bigger, I was a little dissapointed in how small the local crafts were, and couldn’t figure out why a home food delivery service, a church and a tupperware vendor counted as crafts!
So did you ask what happened to the cow you saw being birthed? Did it get a name or anything? –WDave