Thanksgiving 2022

We had a very nice Thanksgiving this year, everyone here but Emily. Patty started early in the week making sides and generally preparing the feast, the picture below is from the evening before. Me & Patty started the day by attending Mass and giving thanks to God for everything we’ve been blessed with, which is quite a bit.

Due to popular demand we decided to go ahead and fry two of the turkeys and bake the third traditionally. Since we had the fryer out we ended up also deep frying french fries and onion rings and boy were they good!! There was also a request for kaiser buns so we ordered some from a local bakery.

While we were frying food the farmer began harvesting the soy beans, boy does that guy work hard. Short video below.

With the food prepared we sat down for our traditional meal and I made a little speech on everything we had to be grateful for, although I’m sure I missed a number of items. I didn’t realize it but Patrick was recording the whole thing, see below.

The kids brought sides that were delicious, Paul & Colleen brought mashed potatoes and Maddy & Dennis brought Mac’N’Cheese, neither of which lasted very long. After dinner we all were pretty much in a ‘turkey comma’. A few other pictures from dinner time below, click to enlarge.

It was such a nice evening we got the small fire pit going and sat out on the back hill. The Delaney’s came over and we traded stories and generally caught up.

When it was time to go in I noticed that the farmer was STILL harvesting. He ended up staying until about 1am.

First Annual Friends-Giving

We invited a bunch of folks from St. Patrick’s over for our first annual Springfield Farm Friends-Giving this past weekend. My brothers Mark & Steve came over Friday to “prep” for the first day of hunting.

On Friday we set everything up, cleaned out the barn, setup a big screen TV with chairs, kerosene heater, etc. and gave it a tryout Friday evening.

We all went out on the UTV and gathered downed wood to use for our usual large bonfire.

We started frying the turkeys at 10am with a target guest arrival of noon. This was the first time I’ve fried turkey in at least 5 years but all went well with Patty prepping the birds and my brothers assisting with the frying operation.

Folks started arriving at noon and very quickly it became quite busy, kids riding scooters and bikes on the driveway, hay rides, chowing down on a very large amount of food, folks brought some delicious dishes. And of course the bonfire, cuz, well, we’re all pyros at heart. Below are pictures of a large number of minivans parked, and people generally chowing down.

One of the hay rides before heading off.

Patty hid letters around the yard/house for the kids to do a scavenger hunt and the Radel sisters helped “ride herd” on the process. Kids really liked it. Below is the result, although there was one letter I found later stuck by the garage??

Scavenger Hunt Results

I took a bunch of guests on a tour of the property, trying to give a flavor for the local history and the family that owned the property for so long. Here are a few pictures from the game camera of the tours.

Looks like Matt, Rob and their wives & kids had a blast riding the ATVs.

When it started getting dark we lit up the Christmas lights for the first time.

By the time it got dark we were pretty much gathered around the bonfire. My wife tells me I fell asleep before everyone left, but I’m pretty sure she is wrong.