The Common Ground Fair, Unity, Maine

So last Saturday James and I went off to the Common Ground Country Fair held by MOFGA (the Maine Farmers and Gardeners Association) in Unity, Maine about 12 miles away from us. A beautiful day for it as you can see. It's a celebration of rural living where you can learn how to start a fire, buy wind turbines, see rabbits and eat doughnuts!!

So, OF COURSE, the first thing we did was head for the doughnuts...apple cider maple doughnuts no less....they were really good, nice and subtle and very wholesome...not like the puffy, over sugary things one purchases ELSEWHERE!!...and you can see what a good girl I was as I brought my own mug so as not to waste paper products...little Miss Goody Two Shoes, that's me!!

Next thing we did was see that I had actually won a couple of blue ribbons without even trying!! I must get in touch with the Shea's of Stonewall Farm and see if they are distant rellies??

The day was full of beautiful creatures...many of whom liked to peek over stable walls and such...above is a mule....and below a sweet horse...

..then best of all a cheeky alpaca who seems to be well aware of the cuteness of the sign below his batting eyelashes!!

What a handsome pair...with their little coats on because it was a tad bit cold in the shade.

Look...you can go for a ride with a mule team...what fun...from Pine Hills Farm

Here's a sweet little thing pulling it's people round the fairgrounds...

and showing us how clever they are being able to back up through some obstacles

As the show comes to a close you can seperate out all your garbage and people come by on pedal powered vehicles to collect and YES actually sort the trash before recycling the vast majority of it....yea for the Common Ground Fair!!

...and here's our ride to the car park, a vintage tractor run by volunteers

Off to the sunset we go after a lovely day out in Unity, Maine.

More colour comes to Maine!

The roadsides here in Maine are alive with lovely fluffy asters, the last of the goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace .....it's a beautiful sight!!...looks like a fairy forest, at least that's what my art teacher at school would have said!

A close up of the wild asters...

...and a close up of the asters in my front garden

...some glorious berries in the back of the house...don't know what they are but the colour palette reminds me of traffic lights

A lingering Queen Anne's lace...the smell is beautiful...delicate and old-fashioned, I just found out you can make jelly from it, Colleen's on Route One in Searsport sells a delicious jelly made from the flowers...a very subtle yellow-green colour, quite exquisite.
Oh oh...kinda looks like a snowflake doesn't it...yikes!

...and lingering zinnia's...these flowers have been going FOREVER, I can't believe how they have lasted, I didn't even plant these, they just showed up this year out of the blue. I thought I'd be clever and cut some, hang them upside down in the house and dry them....what a sad sight they were, zinnias DO NOT dry prettily at all!!...don't bother if you're tempted

and finally...who is this cheeky lot?? A bunch of wild turkeys looking very neolithic wandering around at the back of the house....the dogs didn't give a hoot...no howling, no barking, no nothing...I did however have a word with the turkeys and told them to "Run, run for your lives" for, as we humans know, Thanksgiving is coming!!

Why it's a sweetpea in my onesie!!

Welcome to planet Earth Little Maddie!!

This is a picture of my friend Elizabeths' niece's daughter, Maddie, jauntily sporting one of my 'Freshly Baked' onesies, organic no less!! Well done Maddie, you have great taste you little sausage you!!
BTW 'Little sausage' is Brit speak for anyone or anything that is very cute and adorable!!
To buy this and other fantabulous 'Freshly Baked' gifts for the newly arrived Sweetpea in your life please click here! Thank you!!

My MOFGA poster submission....

So there I was thinking I had missed the deadline for a submission to the MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association... a marHvellous organization which puts on the wonderful annual "Common Ground Fair" coming up soon on Sept. 25, 26 and 27th) poster competition for 2010 when some lovely person at the Belfast Coop, thank you KATE, told me the deadline had been extended to September 10th at 4pm. Well...what the heck I thought, I might as well pull something together, I work well with a tight deadline, and throw my hat in the ring too. Those of you who read the blog will recognize the rooster from my Belfast Chicken Village t-shirt...a little less colourful this time, and here above you see the beginnings of my design...in my usual messy manner (actually this is a little tidied for the photograph - I CANNOT work on a clean table...just not possible and believe me I have tried!)

Here is the finished result...my apologies for the not-so-good quality of the photograph...it was too large for me to scan on my 8.5 x 11 scanner so the image is distorted and the colours are not good but you get the general idea...if MOFGA doesn't take it I have plans to make it into a new year's card for...you guessed it, this coming New Year!!!
Wish me luck!!

OMG!!! How adorable is this picture!!

A little field of giraffe cake toppers by Carrie Lynn Fields of Fields of Cake fame, these sweet little guys were just shipped all the way to San Francisco and yea they made it safely!! Carrie is a spectacular baker from Brunswick, Maine who makes the most beautiful and charming custom cakes...you can check her blog here please go have a look at her creations!!, she also has a fan page on Facebook here