Mark your calendars: Loudoun County Farm Tour

Twice each year, in the fall and the spring, Loudoun farms open their doors for the general public to visit thanks to the Loudoun Farms Fall and Spring Farm Tour.  The Spring Farm Tour is great for seeing all the newborn baby pigs, lambs, calves, horses, and other animals.  It's also a great excuse to visit some of the awesome Loudoun County vineyards and do a little wine-tasting.

LW and our good friend LS wine-tasting 

at Loudoun Valley Vinyards 

during the Spring Farm Tour

 
Well, it's that time of year again!  Here's the basics, reposted from the Loudoun Farms website:

2010 Spring Farm Tour

Spend a Weekend in the Country!

Join us for Loudoun's 2010 Spring Farm Tour
May 15 & 16, 2010 - 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.(Click here for photos from past Spring Farm Tours)

Scroll down to link to participating farms!
 

Download a Word document of Farm Tour participants
Download a 2010 Spring Farm Tour Map!

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 15 and Sunday, May 16, 2010 enjoy this SELF-GUIDED TOUR down country roads to participating Loudoun County farms. Buy spring seedlings and plants for your home; say hello to farm animals and greet spring babies; tour a winery; learn how food gets from the farm to your table; and much more. There are new farms on the tour this year! Bring the whole family for a day or two of fun, education, and agritainment!

Visit the Loudoun Farms website for more information on participating farms and events.

Mayne's Tree Farm

On Monday, some friends of ours from church invited us to join their family tradition of going to Mayne's Tree Farm to go for a hay ride and pick out pumpkins. Mayne's is in a small but adorable town called Buckeystown, Maryland not far from Frederick.

We were really impressed with Mayne's. It was a truly enjoyable experience. It's out in a very rural area and isn't at all commercialized.

Right after we pulled into the parking lot, the farmer brought out the John Deere tractor pulling a trailer with some hay bales on it. We all climbed on board and enjoyed the ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins.



We told the boys the same rule as the family who invited us - they each got to pick one pumpkin, and they could pick any pumpkin they wanted as long as they could carry it.

I picked one out, too.

Pumpkin Self-Defense

The boys bent the rules a bit and decided that their stuffed animals should each get a pumpkin, too.

Lotis and his pumpkin

Teddy and his pumpkin

Weighing-In and Paying-Up

After we finished at Mayne's Tree Farm, we had an awesome lunch at a pizza place just north of Buckeystown. Then we did some sight seeing around the Maryland countryside on our way back home.

The farmland up there is beautiful.

I love autumn.

We took White's Ferry back across the Potomac north of Leesburg, Virginia. Then we stopped at a few Loudon County vineyards to do some wine-tasting. There were some gorgeous flowers out in front of the Lost Creek and Hidden Creek vineyards.

Overall, it was a wonderful autumn day out in the country with my family. If you're in the DC area and looking for a nice day's outing to pick up some pumpkins with your family, then I highly recommend Mayne's Tree Farm.

REMINDER: THIS WEEKEND is the Loudoun County Fall Color Tour! Click on the link for a map and list of participating farms and what they will be offering.

Fall Color Tour

My MIL has been in town helping us unpack and get settled in the house. She had to leave today to drive back up north. So this morning we took a break from unpacking and went to visit a couple of stops on the Loudoun County Farm Tour going up Route 15 on Grammy's way out of town.


First we stopped at the Temple Hall Farm Regional Park. This is yet another one of the wonderful parks of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA) that I love. It's kind of hard to see in the photo above, but the yellow sign says the regional park authority is inviting people to "GET LOST!" in the corn maze.

We saw some of these...
and lots of these...
And a bunch of these...
And a few of these...
And lots of these...

We saw many varieties of horses, ponies, pigs, turkeys, and chickens.

The parking lot attendants were pretty intimidating, too.

Man it was COLD out today. Note how ES is bundled up in the picture above. The car dashboard told me it was 58F outside, but it was also WINDY, and the wind was sucking every ounce of heat from the exposed skin of my face and hands.


Activity-wise, they had the corn maze, a pig race, a tractor ride pulling little cars painted like cows, but the thing ES seemed to enjoy the most was the CORN GUN. (Go figure.)

FIRE!
[Psss-THUNK!]
(See the corn flying through the air?)

The corn maze looked like fun, but (a) it cost $10 per adult and $8 per child, and (b) my nose was starting to run all down my face from the cold wind, and I needed to find a kleenex.

Next up, we headed up Route 15 a little ways to the Farmer John's Wayside Fruit and Vegetable market.

It was really cool to see this place after being in Hawaii for so long. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of beautiful things to see in Hawaii, too - especially the tropical flowers and rainbows. Even so, it was good to be back in Virginia. I tried to capture a different kind of rainbow with my camera at Farmer John's.

Let's see... how does the color spectrum go again? ROYGBIV...

Red...

Man I missed GOOD, fresh tomatoes while we were in Hawaii.

Red and Orange...

Orange...

Yellow...

Green...

Green...

Green...

Blue...
Okay, blue was the one color I had a hard time finding at the farm stand. This was the best I could do.

Indigo and Violet...

Overall, it was a beautiful drive up Route 15 through the Loudoun County countryside.

We said farewell to Grammy as she headed north, and we headed back down to Leesburg to grab some lunch and then home to continue working on things around the house (hanging curtains, installing lights, unpacking and putting stuff away...).

There are many more farms open during the farm tour, and it's going on again tomorrow, so I encourage you to go out and enjoy it if you're in the area.