gorman heritage farm sunflower festival...

as i mentioned in another post, we like to spend a good portion of every saturday outdoors during the month of october. a few weeks back we spent our time 90 miles south of here at the gorgeous Gorman Heritage Farm tucked away in the middle of a busy town in Evendale, Ohio.

we have a favorite local heritage farm closeby that i've blogged about many times before called Slate Run Historical Farm, but what lured me to this particular farm was their annual Sunflower Festival. i loooooooove me some sunflowers. they're my favorite flower, for sure.

the farm has several areas of interest and is fun for all ages. had it not been so cold and windy, i know my girls would have spent much more time in the Children's Garden, digging and planting, picking and pulling. they love that kind of stuff and this area was perfect for that.

but the wind was bitter cold so we made sure to keep our bodies moving up the hill and around the cornfield to find the farm and other activities. that's when doug and ashlyn found the popcorn stand and emma became fascinated with the cloggers clogging to one of katy perry's songs. but then they gathered all the kids that were watching and did a round of the chicken dance.

emma loves to dance. ashlyn, not so much.

after dancing and stuffing their faces with popcorn, they headed over to the chicken coop and got to hear stories from my childhood about collecting eggs at grandma's house. they learned that the blue spotted ones are those that are laying eggs.

but really, they were just interested in polishing off that bag of popcorn. LOL.

this one seamed to follow us every where we turned.

then we made friends with the billy goats. well....three of us did. spidergirl wanted nothing to do with them as you can see. which is so odd because she's normally not my fearful child. these sister reversed roles for the day, i suppose.

with permission from the farm hands, ashlyn lured them over to her with handfuls of popcorn, telling her the whole time..."see they won't hurt you....they won't bite."

spidergirl got brave and had her own handful of popcorn ready to feed them, but just as they started to eat from her hand, she tossed the popcorn.....

and stood up tall wanting them to get away. (this photo of her is a new favorite! irresistibly CUTE!)
but ashlyn, she was like the animal whisperer during this farm visit. she has such a sensitive and tender heart. i'm so thankful that we're seeing more and more of her personality and less and less of her anxiety.

after spending a fair amount of time with the goats we made our way to the barn where ashlyn romped on the bales of hay and made friends with the horse, while spidergirl was obsessed with hulling and grinding corn to make feed for the chickens.

and then............
we made our way over to the ginormous field of sunflowers. and my heart skipped a beat.

we grabbed ourselves a pair of snippers and started picking out our favorites and snipping them off for just 50 cents a stem! 50 cents! AWESOMESAUCE.


we snipped a bouquet for home and then the girls picked their favorite bloom to take in to their teachers.doug snipped sunflowers while i snapped photos. it was breathtaking. i seriously have never seen anything like it.


there were two photographers there honing their technique that i had a nice little conversation with. you better believe i asked one of them to take a family photo. :)

i couldn't get over how beautiful this not-yet-bloomed sunflower was in the midst of a field of blooms. there's a deep life analogy just hidden in this photo......late bloomer.....bursting with potential......ya know.

the rest are just some of my favorite photos.........um, EVER. i look at these and see just how truly blessed we are. despite all the trials, and despite all the medical crap we've had to deal with. despite all the shortcomings and despite all the failures, we still press on and put one foot in front of the other. with smiles on our face, even. the resilience we've been given is nothing short of amazing.




don't get me wrong.......life is still crazy! but these weekend outings are nourishment to my soul and keep reminding me just how blessed we are.

(ps....if you're local and you're looking for sunflowers, i found out the day after we went to the farm that there is a sunflower field (4 acres big, i think) at Circle S Farms in Grove City....it's actually a sunflower maze---like a corn maze, just through a sunflower field instead. not sure if they let you cut stems though.)