Saturday was Haymarket Day, here in our little burg. It's a parade down Washington Street, vendors with booths, and a pile of politicos working the crowd. It was a gorgeous day, fair and dry, and we enjoyed it a lot. My daughter marched with her school in the parade, flag-waving and smiling.

The streets were closed long after the parade, so people were able to mill around and enjoy the booths and their neighbors.

Some observations:

• The floats threw lots of candy. We came home with a Halloween-sized load.
• Why does Bob Marshall always ride alone in the parade?
• People, leave your dogs at home, please. They don't enjoy it.
• It was good to see Bruce, as always.
• We're getting an Old Towne Centre. Yes, with the faux Olde Englishe dorkspellinge.
• The Kena Shriners were great, with a band and some wicked little go-karts.
• This seems to be McCain Country, given the stickers, applause, and t-shirts I witnessed.
• The folks from Evergreen had the engines polished and they looked great.
• Cool weather or not, the Mosby Players hoop skirts and wool clothing made me sweat just looking at them.
• ROTC was well-represented, with plenty of young men and women marching.

Links and dates for this year's farm tours and festivals:

• Prince William Co. (VA): Sep 20 - Haymarket Day, parade starts at 10am
• Prince William Co. (VA): Sep 27-28 - Western Prince William County Farm Tour, 9 stops, very kid-friendly.
• Culpeper Co. (VA): Oct 4-5 - Culpeper Harvest Days Farm Tour
• Fauquier Co. (VA): Oct 11 - 13th Annual Farm Tour, focus seems to be southern Fauquier.
• Page Co. (VA): Oct 11-12 - Heritage Festival, live music, great food, and plenty of tractors.
• Loudoun Co. (VA): Oct 18-19 - Annual Farm Color Tour, 23 farms, 14 wineries.
• Frederick Co. (MD): Oct 18-19 - Family Festival @ The Farm, 20 farms. Couple that with the Loudoun Co. tour and you've got quite a weekend!

It's that time of year again, time for the annual farm tours of Northern Virginia and central Maryland.

• 29-30 Sep: Virginia - Prince William County Wild Western Farm Tour
• 29-30 Sep: Maryland - Frederick County Oktoberfest
• 13 Oct: Virginia - Fauquier County Farm Tour
• 20-21 Oct: Virginia - Loudoun County Fall Farm Color Tour
• 20-21 Oct: Maryland - Frederick County FamilyFestival@theFarm

The links:

Loudoun Farm Color Tour, includes farms and wineries
Family Festival @ The Farm, Frederick County, MD.

Fall in the Loudoun Valleys is beautiful. The colorful trees of the Blue Ridge, Short Hill and Sugarloaf Mountains set the stage for your self-guided tour of 14 farms (along with the Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum, the Loudoun County Master Gardeners, and the Loudoun Valley Sheep Producers Association), each offering their own unique experience of rural Loudoun. See cows and calves, horses, sheep, pigs, and other animals in their natural environments. Choose apples, pumpkins, flowers, herbs and mor from the bounty of the fall harvest. Tour a winery, talk to the proprietors about their grapes and wines, and learn why Loudoun's wines are winning awards and making news throughout the wine industry.

Last year's blog entry on this topic.

Technorati Tag: fall

The Fauquier Times-Democrat has a nice little article on US 15, which runs north-south parallel to the mountain here.

In the 17th century, native Americans used the trail, calling it the Great Warriors Path. As settlement increased, the road became a traders route for colonial America, known as the Carolina Road, running from New York to North Carolina.

Soldiers fighting in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War all traveled on this route. When the British occupied Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were kept at Rokeby, an estate near the Carolina Road.

The influenza is circulating among the residents of my home. I wish for an emergency trip to a tropical island.

It's wonderful that there is so little crime in Fauquier County that they can put it into a single jpeg image. Attempted theft on Rogues Road. Heh.

Daily commutes on Northern Virginia's hectic roadways shortchange civic groups by wearing you out and eating up your time.

As a result, "you don't have something that's truly representative of the community when you take half the people in this county who work out of the county each day."

Other "Living Here, Working There" articles are here, here, here, and here.

The blogroll has been updated. Visit the many fine blogs seen at the right.

Abitibi-Consolidated, which I've mentioned before, in a not so good light, is not doing so well. The various articles I read all include the possibility of substantial changes to or the sale of the Lufkin plant. I'd bet it will be the latter.

Light blogging this weekend. The Sister is in town from Texas, and we'll be wringing the fun out of Northern Virginia. The first stop was the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center otherwise known as the National Air and Space Museum, at Dulles Airport. Picture taking was hella-tough, since the hangar is so large and not brightly lit. Luckily, the space hangar opened on November 1st, so we got the full view of the Enterprise and a ton of other nifty space gear. Photos up on that in a few days.

The Llama Butchers turn 1!. Yip, yip, and all that jazz.

Heh. Seems that the same thing happened to me last week and I missed it. Glad I'm not married to the blog, or I'd be getting a divorce about now, what with missing the first anniversary and all that. If you must, you can check out the archives. This is posting #173.

RSS feed now in the house.

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