Fall Festival

Every year we have our Fall Festival at the Farm. Basically it's a cross between a fundraiser for our show team kids and an excuse to dress ourselves and our horses up in crazy costumes!

The festival kicked off at 4:00 with our Costume Parade. My daughter and her pony were the Princess and the Frog. My son was the Headless Horseman aboard his steed, Jazzy.

I actually got behind in planning costumes this year and had to throw one together for myself. I ended up dressing as Barbie...bad Barbie Equitation and all.... and Nitrox was Barbie's horse.

 As I watched and helped the others get their horses ready, I suddenly realized Nitrox was going to have a lot to look at. I had spent so much time trying to make sure I did a simple costume that wouldn't spook him to wear the first time, that I didn't bother to think about him having to look at all the other horses dressed in costumes. Luckily he handled it like a champ and was like having an old pro. He was really interested in the Superman Pony, but he mainly just wanted to touch him! The arena was really crowded, but he took everything in stride and handled everything really well. I was really proud of him.

After the costume parade we host a silent auction of baked goods, a raffle of donated items, and finally a spooky pumpkin walk through the wooded trails on property. I baked and brought 2 loaves of pumpkin raisin bread and a peach cobbler and both brought in good prices. I finally won a coconut cake, which was all I really wanted since everyone in my house hates coconut so I never get any! I also won some Charles de Knuffy Dressage DVD's in the raffle! Faith won a neat basket filled with cowgirl decorations for her room. Dwight won a little cute stuffed monkey he really wanted.

Lots of really great carved pumpkins were brought this year to be lit and placed on our pumpkin walk. We did the first walk through for the little kids and adults that was not scary at about dusk. Once it got dark, several of us adults went and hid in the woods on trail for the older kids to do the haunted pumpkin walk. We set up speaker playing halloween sounds, hid and jumped out, banged chains, screamed, and spooked. It was a lot of fun, and kids decided it was a crowd favorite and insisted we do it again next year. We are already planning how to make it more spooky!