As the flier so aptly put it, my daughter "enjoy(ed) a day of old-fashioned fun" at the 19th Annual Farm Day held at Cherry Hills Park in downtown Falls Church, Virginia. The many activities included pumpkin painting...:
...pony rides:
...blacksmithing (is this an actual verb?):
...hayrides:
...getting to grind up corn kernels:
...and clambering up stacks of hay:
About the only thing my 女儿 didn't get to do this afternoon was go inside the Cherry Hill Farmhouse, which is the sacrifice one has to make when one hasn't finished eating her snow cone. Dad, however, did get to check out the well-preserved Greek Revival-style framed house that dates from 1845, and came away suitably impressed with this Virginia landmark which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places:
This is the first real fall season for both my wife and me since the time we lived in Yokkaichi 四日市, a city in Mie Prefecture 三重県 in Japan. For Amber, it's her first genuine autumn in the sense of cooler temperatures, grayer skies and grounds littered with leaves "mostly coloured yellow". Festivals such as the one this afternoon evoke scenes of a simpler time, of a more pastoral society, an imagined halcyon past, and a yearning to return to the roots of an idealized America and an era in which people ate homemade shortbread cookies and drank birch beer (and both of which I purchased today at The Local Market). For a six year-old girl too young and too full of energy and enthusiasm to pine for an illusory lost age, it was just a lot of fun.
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