fiberfiend: January 2006

A Visit to the Pumpkin Patch

Here is one of our favorite family autumn outings! When I first began home schooling our children in the early ‘80’s, I discovered Book’s Family Farm and utilized it every autumn as one of our favorite field trips!! The farm began in 1984 as a small ten acre pumpkin patch, inspired by Grandma Book’s need for a nursery school field trip activity for the school she directed. The pumpkin patch/farm soon included horse-drawn wagon rides, petting farm animals, and expanded so rapidly in popularity and size, they had to relocate in 1987 to their present 250 acre site along Highway 99 in Durham, California.

The entire Book family resides at the new acreage, and includes Grandma and Grandpa Book, their three children and their spouses, and eleven grandchildren. A true family farm!! Every autumn they host their annual harvest festival, which now includes corn and hay mazes, a bounce house, local elementary school scarecrow displays, along with their draft horse-drawn wagon and carriage rides, and live music. And, of course, fields full of pumpkins to choose from!! It is always more fun to visit with our grandchildren and their parents, but even us “old codgers” still love and look forward to it!! Meet you there next October!

An October trip to the Book Family Farm.

What a beautiful harvest!

A Spaghetti Factory Supper!

The final and favorite stop on the way home, after leaving “Apple Hill,” is supper at the famous Spaghetti Factory! Delicious, plentiful, and reasonable!! A great way to top off a wonderful week-end!!

A Stop By "Apple Hill".

On the way home from Christian Women’s Retreat, we always stop by “Apple Hill,” near Camino, California, to visit the week-end crafting booths and buy apple pies and turn-overs, carmel apples, dough balls, apple cider, and a variety of apples and pears to take back home.
“Apple Hill” began with sixteen ranchers back in the fifties, with pears as their primary crop. Forty years ago there was a terrible pear blight that swept through the area, taking production from 52,000 tons in 1958 down to 8,435 tons in 1965! After visiting Oak Glen in southern California, the ranchers discovered a way to keep their farms and make the rich Camino soil productive again. In 1964 they formed the “Apple Hill” Growers’ Association. That year they produced 50,000 paper litter bags which they gave out at the California State Fair, offering two pounds of free apples to visitors who brought their bags to “Apple Hill” that season. Since then, the Apple Hill Growers’ Association has expanded from those original 16 to over 55 ranchers, including Christmas tree growers, vineyards, wineries, a micro brewery, and a spa.

One of our favorite ranches is Larsen’s Apple Barn, the oldest (circa 1860!) continuously owned and operated family farm in the area. The ranch features a dozen varieties of apples, pears, peaches and nectarines, along with apple cider, honey, and pumpkins. Clarice Larsen originated the first place to sample homemade desserts, baked goods, jams, jellies, and sauces. Other attractions to the Larsen farm are the three acres of lawn with picnic tables, a waterfall, waterwheel, the oldest living apple tree in El Dorado County, and the Larsen Pioneer Farm Museum which includes a log cabin, covered wagon, antique farm equipment, and doll houses. Most of the ranches are open daily from Labor Day until Christmas, except Larsen’s, which is closed on Saturdays. Hope you will have an opportunity to enjoy “Apple Hill!”

One of the many Apple Hill orchards, with crafting booths in the background.

An Apple Hill craftsman at his pottery wheel.

Christian Women's Retreat

Located in the Sierra foothills, Leoni Meadows is the setting of one of our California Seventh-Day Adventist owned and operated campground and conference centers. On two consecutive week-ends in early October, several hundred women gather here to attend the northern California Christian Women’s Retreat. There are special guest speakers and musicians to encourage and inspire, workshops, a nature center and observatory, a museum, a small train, and new this year, a hay wagon pulled by large draft horses. There are also miles of nature trails for hiking/running. Saturday night is “game night,” a definite favorite, since it seems in our hectic world there is so little time for that kind of table-top recreation, with T.V., videos, and computers, etc. competing for our attention. I have had the blessing of attending for the past 20 years.
Now it’s an annual tradition for my daughters and I (when their schedules allow). We begin Friday morning early with breakfast in Nevada City, a quaint, charming, old gold rush town in the Sierra foothills. After breakfast, we stroll the streets and browse in all the cute little touristy shops until mid afternoon, when it’s time to leave for Leoni Meadows. We usually arrive just in time to check in, hug friends we haven’t seen for a year, and have a delicious and welcome hot supper prepared by the superb kitchen/cafeteria staff!! Then it’s off to the first meeting, to bring in the Sabbath hours by singing praises together and listening to the guest speaker’s Friday evening message.

The Leoni House Museum, with one of the nature trails in the foreground.

Here's this year's newest feature at Leoni Meadows.

My daughter, Krystalynn, and I, following our first hayride at Leoni Meadows.

My daughter's fiber art form.

This year at the Christian Women‘s Retreat, my daughter, Krystalynn, taught me how to begin cross-stitching, which is her area of fiber expertise, as the cross-stitch pieces below illustrate. In exchange, I will teach her how to knit, beginning with a simple scarf.

Krystalynn's first large completed cross-stitch.

Her most recently completed cross-stitch.

Here is the current cross-stitch my daughter is creating.

SP6 Knitting Event/September to December

The sixth Secret Pal knitting event began in September, and I reluctantly joined. Reluctantly, because of an extremely busy schedule the last four months of the year, including two major holidays, and the fact that the event ended in December! I was blessed with a very faithful and insightful secret pal, to which the photos below will attest. Thank you SP6 for these lovely gifts.

How fun!! Haiku is my favorite poetry format. It is Japanese verse form using seventeen syllables only, and consisting of 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.