Lambs and Lettuces Festival June 7
Join the Circle!
We LOVE to share our farm with like-minded families and individuals who are hungry for the connection with land, food and animals that we so crave. The circle is a symbol of community, inclusion and inter-dependence and those things are what Circle M is all about. So do come and join the party!
Circle M Farm’s
Second Annual
Lambs and Lettuces Festival
June 7, 2008
1784 County Rd. H, Blanchardville, WI
Noon to 1 Snakes Alive!
Herpetologist Tom Kessenich will introduce us to several live snakes that are local to our area. Learn about the wildlife that calls the Pecatonica River Valley home and get up close and personal with these special critters.
1 to 2 pm Horse Grooming and Rides for Little Ones
Our retired parade horse, Shakespeare, loves to get a bath and good brushing from our young visitors. After we tidy him up, we’ll saddle him up and take younger kids for gentle rides around our corral.
2 pm on…Spinning Wheel Demonstration
Join local spinner Linda Derrickson for a presentation and demonstration of the ancient craft of twisting wool into yarn with a spinning wheel. Linda will also have pelts and yarns for purchase. Later in the afternoon, local spinner Jean Margret Merrell-Beech will ply her craft on the spinning wheel. If you’ve wanted to check this out for yourself, now’s a great time to ask lots of questions and get advice.
2 to 5 pmKnitting Circle with Expert Help
Local knitting teacher and pattern designer Cindy Guggemos will lead an informal knitting circle and be available to provide help with your knitting troubles or unfamiliar techniques. Cindy will be selling her own lovely patterns, including lace and socks. Bring a project and sit in, or get some help to begin knitting yourself!
3 pm Shearing Demonstration
Come into the paddock and see how sheep-shearing was done back in pioneer days – with a great big scissor-type clipper.
3:30 to 5:30 pm Wooly Fun with Dye, Felt and Spindles
Kids and adults alike are invited to visit with local fiber artists Kriss Marion, Maggie Schley and Chris Hulet leading hands-on activities with wool. Try dyeing yarn with plant fibers and Kool-Aid, wet-felting wool pouches and spinning yarn with a drop spindle.
5:00 pm Milking Goats and Bottle-Feeding Babies
Take a turn milking one of our dairy goats, and help bottle-feed our runtling lamb and pig.
6:30 pm Coffee Roasting over the Fire
Join Madison small-batch coffee roaster Bob Clark of Fool of Beans for an educational and tasty presentation on how coffee roasting works and why coffee grown in different places tastes unique. We’ll conclude by roasting some coffee over the fire, and sample our creation.
7 pm Pot Luck Community Dinner
Join us for a relaxed dinner out among the animals! Bring a dish to pass and drinks to share and we’ll finish off with S’Mores by the fire.
8 pm Old Time Jamboree Sing-A-Long
Bring an instrument, if you play one, or we’ll enlist you as a vocalist in our folk and bluegrass sing-a-long led by local guitar-banjo-brass player Bob Beech and backed up by the MooGrass BlueGrass Trio.
Our farm events are designed to pull members of our CSA into community with each other and with the life of the homestead. But friends, family and interested members of the public are all welcome to visit during these open-house scheduled events. However, you can feel free to call us and schedule appointments to visit, shop, tour, take a class or set up camp for a few days.
We’ll end the CSA season with a Homestead Harvest Festival on October 25.
These aren’t lambs, they’re kids! Well, there is one little lamb in there, and all of them want to be fed. Bottle feeding is a favorite activity here at the spring Lambs and Lettuces Festival.
We are about 40 minutes southwest of Madison, a half hour north of Monroe and about three hours from Chicago. Our best advice on directions is to Mapquest our address from your home and then follow the country road signs very carefully.
