It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Part I

        Christmas at Cair Paravel is celebrated with the gathering of family, incredible food, and huge trees.  Every year for the passed who-knows-how-many Christmases the Ledford family Christmas tree has gotten bigger and bigger.  This year was no exception.  We decided to support a local business, so Whitt, Martha, Maddie, Mia, our good friend and farm-helper-extraordinaire Max, and I headed to Spruce Rock Farm Inc. in Madison, Va just north of Stanardsville.  There we had a great selection of trees ranging all sizes.  Tim, the owner of the farm, was more than helpful and gave us the grand tour of the tree selection, and pricing.

Mia ready to tree hunt!

Max enjoying some hot cider as he waits for the search to begin!

        After looking through the selection (and a lot of convincing) Maddie chose the biggest tree available for the Ledford family tree: a nineteen foot monster of a douglas fir. Mia and I were excited to choose our second tree together as a married couple, and our first tree living up on the farm. We don't have quite as much space for a tree as Whitt and Martha do in the main house, so we settled on a measly little eleven foot tall tree.

Whitt standing in front of the chosen tree!

Mia and my choice!

         Out with the chainsaws and our selected trees came tumbling down. Usually yelling "timber" is a bit unnecessary when it comes to Christmas trees, but these two were the exception. The video below is Mia and my tree being cut down.

        With the trees felled all we had to do was load them up and off we were for home! Fortunately Tim let Whitt drive the truck to the tree as opposed to having to carry the tree all the way back up to the parking area.  With the help of the farm owner, we were able to carry the smaller tree over to be loaded onto our car.

The tree all loaded up.

Maddie, Max, and Mia showing off the great feat!

Mia and I before the journey home.

        Next Christmas keep Spruce Rock Farm in mind! Their prices cannot be beat!

Tim & Doris Williams

Spruce Rock Farm Inc.

P.O. Box 789

Madison, Va 22727

Happy New Year!

    Happy New Year from Cair Paravel! We're looking forward to 2012 and all it has to offer! Just in the passed week and a half our planning for the year has shown this year to be a busy one. With the new year come some fun changes to our blog to help it and us become more interactive with you the reader. A new "tab" feature has been added to the top of the blog to act as a handbook for the farm. It's our hope that these tabs will help to make our blog a hub for all things Cair Paravel so that our day-to-day activities, BnB availability and reservations, food we make, animals we tend, even the current weather conditions and forecasts for the farm are all a click away from our blog home page.

    At the top of the screen just below our title picture and e-mail subscription bar, you'll see tabs across your screen. Click on any of these tabs and it will take you there! More and more tabs will be added in the next few weeks so feel free to explore! What better way to keep up with the farm then adding our blog as your home screen? These tabs will help our blog be a more useful tool.

Thank you for all the support in making 2011 a great year! 

 

Thanksgiving: In Review!

    Thanksgiving this year was a fun-packed weekend-long undertaking filled with incredible food, awesome friends and family, warm fires, and merriment. Whitt and Martha had the usual suspects up for Thanksgiving dinner aside from Grethcen and Austin. Unfortunately they were unable to make it up from Asheville, NC.
    The meal consisted of three (yes, three!) of our turkeys prepared in different ways. Two birds had been brined by Mia and Martha prior to cooking: one in a water and salt mixture, the other in a mixture of water, milk, salt, and various spices. The third was relatively untouched prior to cooking. The idea behind brining is that the salt and liquid mixture will coat the skin and form a protective coating that holds in the moisture of the bird while being cooked with minimum basting required. The two brined birds were grilled while the third was cooked as normal in the oven. Howard and Whitt spear-headed the grilling of the turkeys.

Howard sprinkling on some magic.

A couple swipes of goodness...

And viola!

Whitt and Howard talking about the boring view.

In goes the bird!

Annie doing one last nose check before the lid is closed to make sure it smells good.

     According to all present, every bird was unbelievable, but the grilled birds where exceptionally good. Of course the birds were merely the center piece to the meal. All of the sides and desserts were also, as normal, incredible.

This Is Ground Control to Major Tom

Hello blog followers!

As many of you may have expected, the holidays on top of our regular work schedule have been swallowing us whole. Thanksgiving is always a blast at the farm because not only do we celebrate on Thursday, but we also have Thanksgiving Pt. II! The barn was in dire need of a re-vamping with the influx of animals in need of storage. I'm glad to say we have finished most of that project up. We've been able to get Christmas trees, decorate for the season, throw a holiday party, host lot's of visitors, AND rent a ram to breed our ewes. Needless to say, the blog will not be neglected for the next few weeks.

There's so much to tell you about! Stay tuned!

-Brendan and the whole Cair Paravel Family!

Pumpkin Carving!

Disclaimer: Yes. This post is late. Very late.

        Halloween fell on a Monday this year. That meant children across America were bummed having to trick-or-treat on a school night. For us up on the farm it meant hurray! More candy for us! Actually, seeing as we don't get trick-or-treaters, there was no need for us to get candy at all... but we did carve pumpkins!

        I'm horrible at carving pumpkins. I have really great ideas, however, executing them is very difficult for me. Yes, it would be rad to carve Moby Dick exploding out of the sea with a ship between his jaws, but I can't draw it on paper let alone carve it out of a pumpkin. So after beginning the most epic pumpkin carving on the planet, my pumpkin ended up looking like this:

        Whitt's pumpkin didn't turn out nearly as primitive as mine. Nor did he spend two hours of cursing only to cut a huge hole out of the center of the pumpkin.

    Maddie went for the abstract. I'm not sure if there was a face, or if I just took a picture of the wrong side of the pumpkin. Either way, I still really like the design!

        Now Mia: she is a professional. She took pumpkin carving to the next level -- a huge long-neck squash! Ever seen those big dragons used in parades and festivals? You know, the ones with forty people wearing the same dragon costume and dancing down the street? Well, that is what Mia turned her squash into. Check it out!

Mia hard at work!

 

 The finished product!!

 

 

 

 

Follow Us!

  Cair Paravel now has a twitter! Follow us @CairParavelFarm!

Consider it the addendum to the blog, the more day-to-day, the fun filled fact machine of the farm, the picture gateway, the...well, you get the idea. We'll also post news, available products and prices, as well as requests for help with certain projects. Become a bigger part of our farm with Twitter!

@CairParavelFarm

Serenity

Time for boating! Whitt, Maddie, & I took a Sunday trip down to Kinsale, Va to get Whitt's sail boat up and running for the season. We've been so busy the sail boat has been put on the back burner.

Serenity is a 26' sail boat. We were able to get a brand new motor and needed to test it! So we motored out to an island close to the harbor, threw out the anchor, and cleaned the boat just off shore.

Anchored!

The happy captain!

Scrubbing the decks!

Weird shrine to American freedom on the island.

After scrubbing down the decks and cabin we headed out to the bay for a little joy ride. It was a gorgeous day and the ospreys were out in full force fishing. The only thing that would have made the day better is if there was enough wind to set the sails. But at least we now know the new motor works!

A view from the bow.

Land-ho!

Nat Geo shot.

If you look closely you can see the baby in the nest to the right!

Celebrations!

Happy 4th of July!

We've had a wonderful holiday weekend up on the farm. Despite a brief three day lapse in our internet service not only have we been celebrating our nation's independence, but Martha's birthday was on Friday! We celebrated last night by having a potluck. Tonight we're planning on sitting on the porch and watching all the fireworks down in the valley while grilling up some hot dogs and hamburgers.

We've been on high alert for the past 72 hours because our goat Kikki is pregnant and her due date is TODAY. So keep her in your thoughts and we will be updating you on her condition and progress of the birth! Stay tuned!!!

The Pool is Officially Open!

The finished product is amazing! The work really paid off! Now the water is a crystalline blue, and no more roughed up feet from the bottom of the pool. Anyone for a swim?

Mia, Alex, and Liz enjoying the water!

Pool Time

Memorial Day is not only commemorated by paying our respects to those who have fought for our country, but also by opening pools! Our pool needed some work before the swimming season, so Whitt and I tackled it over the course of a week. The bottom of the pool needed to be acid washed, patched, primed, and painted. Boy did that make a huge difference! Now the pool can be enjoyed by all.

The shallow end before...

...and the deep end.

Whitt ready with patching material in hand!

The pool patched...

...and primed!


The painting and filling is next!