farm, food and festival...

We have done well for festivals this year! Last weekend saw our last festival of the year (at least, as far as I know at the moment!) when we spent the day at 'Harvest at Jimmy's' - a really family friendly, small festival at Jimmy Doherty's farm near Ipswich. 

This is not just your average music festival, but has another stage for chefs to demonstrate their thing, a whole area dedicated to the small people (even without little people, I love to see them just having fun here) and all the things that are usually on the farm - a butterfly house, rare breed pigs, goats etc and beautiful woods to wander through. 

The weather had been a bit hit and miss all week but Sunday looked more promising and when we arrived at the site this was what met us...

Cloudy, but enough blue sky and sunshine to throw shadows, a huge helter skelter and a field of teepees!

Doesn't take much to get me excited, I was ready to jump up and down by this point! When exactly are you too old for helter skelters...?!

Jimmy's has fab food - so much of it you spend ages just wandering around trying to make a decision but definitely a cut above your average burger van!

Take a look at these...

How cute is this caravan?! And this van I saw earlier in the year at the VW festival...

I so love everything about this stall - it was really windy but they still had their table cloths and teapots; fab! 

Flags just typify festivals for me...

Bright colours, flying freely in the blue sky - I couldn't stop taking photos of them! (its ok, I'll spare you the torture of my flag-thing!)

I have to confess, I had never heard of Mr Tumble...if you have little people you may well know of him, but mine pre-date teletubbies even so this guy on the main stage was a new experience for me! He must have had several hundred families singing and bouncing up and down in unison! Probably not my choice for an evening's entertainment but great fun to watch people watching him, if you know what I mean, and definitely got the happy feeling going!

Infectious enough for these three unlikely blokes to join in with the hokey cokey...

Sons 1 & 3 and hubby, getting into the swing - with only a minimum amount of alcoholic inducement!

The farm is a really lovely setting - in a pretty rolling bit of countryside and with enough space to not feel overcrowded even with several thousand people milling around. Jimmy's is famous for its pork (cover your ears piggies!) and there are lots of very happy looking pigs around...

I know exactly how this Mummy feels! (there were lots more babies running around!). The boys were awful - no qualms about talking hog roast in front of these young ears!!!

There were little demonstration areas around the place - this was outside the 'food safari' tent...

I just loved these collections of quirky things artfully placed!

There was a chance to follow the rainbow to find the fairy queen...!

I resisted the temptation to join the queue of little people (some of whom were dressed as mini-fairies) to see the fairy queen but I enjoyed the walk through the woods!

And I couldn't resist the butterfly house...

This one never stopped flapping its wings - so fast that they were just a blur!

And these two really got into the festival mood with the help of some girls and some face paint!

My lovely boys!

Just a couple more things to show you...

Remember the plum harvest? I had forgotten all about the jar of plums in brandy which the boys fished out of the cupboard to be bottled. Its pretty clear already and delicious! Just need to leave it to mature now!

And this is completely unconnected to anything in this post but fell in love with this cup and saucer in a charity shop on Saturday...

Much to R's disgust...he thinks we have more than enough cups and mugs as it is! I actually got it thinking it might make the basis of a present but it's so right for peppermint tea!!!

And finally, another snippet of my current WIP (well one of...)...

I'm loving this project!

More next time!!!

Sx