Corn Maze!

Hello loyal readers!

I have had a crazy October. Allow me to list the states I have worked in this month: Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina (x2), Virginia, Georgia, and Maryland. Oh yeah, I also went to a conference in New York State. I think I have been home for a week. Not that I am complaining. I have gotten to work on cemeteries, in the city, in the country, and at both prehistoric and historic sites.

I have been a little sleep deprived and my kitten hates me, well, he will get over it and I will catch up at some point. I will won't I? Right?

Before I left for my epic journey, I gathered up some of my dear friends and went a corn mazing!

After a thorough internet search I selected McKee's corn maze outside of Hillsboro.

None of us had ever done this corn maze thing. Here we are at the beginning, ready to head off a journeying..

First we had to go on a tractor ride, hehe!

When we started, we were each given a ticket. In the maze there were stations where we could punch the ticket. The goal was not just to get out, but to complete your ticket. The record was apparently about an hour and a half. 1.5 hours, for truth. This is a grown-up maze.

They have a maze for babies too. Remember the good old days, when life was so much simpler?

We felt we could handle the whole twelve acres. We came in with a plan, in retrospect we probably over thought the maze concept. We also did not account for the randomness of the whole punch stations. It turns out that only turning one direction really will only get you to the exit, not the punch stations.

Julie looks a-mazing (sorry, had to do it).

We got through the whole maze in about 20 minutes! Whoopee! Except, we only had 3 punches. Then, we turned around and started looking for punch stations.

Josephine is so jaunty looking in this picture.

At this point, things started getting frustrating. We were retracing our steps and sending out scouting parties (no joke). When we found a punch station we would get all excited! Energy renewed!

Then the sun started going down. We started getting hungry. Who knew you should pack food and water for a corn maze?

I wish I could tell you we persevered and finished the maze. We has to stop. It was time to eat.

I was feeling a little bad about this until I saw all of the other tickets. Most people gave up after 3 or 4 punches. Wusses!

This was totally a value, about 3 hours of entertainment for only $8.

Success?

Somehow wandering amongst the corn stalks managed to feel both wholesome and creepy. It seems like a lot of scary movies involve corn fields. Farms seem so wholesome though.

List item checked off for the win!

Cane Creek Farm

Derek and I recently decided to attend a sale our local meat farmer was hosting. We invited some very good friends and all piled into the car to drive almost an hour to Cane Creek. I had a flashback to kindergarten when we went to a dairy farm and got to milk a cow. We were going to see where our meat was being grown! I love farms and as an archaeologist I have spent a good deal of time on them. Once, in Tennessee, I destroyed 3.5 acres of mass produced soybeans with my GPR antenna.

Cane Creek is not really mass produced type farming. All of the animals are pasture raised and rotationally grazed, like the farm in Omnivore's Dilemma.

The day started sunny and beautiful.

Shortly after we arrived at the farm it started snowing.

After we bought the meat in the store we decided to go on a walking tour of the farm. In the snow.

So far in my life, I have noticed that all farms have a pack of happy dogs that follow any sort of human around. One time at a farm in Utah, I had a golden retriever sleep outside my tent for my entire stay. Cane Creek Farm had a happy pack of black labs that came with us on our short walk.

We visited the pigs. They lived in big fields, in these little huts. In this picture most of the pigs were in the huts (it was cold outside). There were these giant sows with little piglets following them around, moving from hut to hut.

Some of the pigs did come and visit us, they were very pretty speckled pigs. This farm specializes in heirloom varieties. They all have their tails (factory pigs get their tails cut off).

We met some chickens too. The chickens at this farm live in mobile coops, so they roam the farm. Pretty rooster.