Red Barn Farm

I spent yesterday afternoon with my housemate Julia, her son Alex (pictured next to me here in the great photo by my colleague Rich Cameron), and several other DePauw faculty and their families at Red Barn Farm, a couple of miles south of town.  It was the most perfect early autumn day imaginable: blue skies, warm sun, cool breeze, highs in the low 60s.

At the farm we did the following farmy things:
1. climbed on a hay bale mountain
2. enjoyed a half-hour hay ride all around the farm, driving past turkeys and chickens and cows
3. cuddled with baby goats
4. gathered eggs from the egg barn
5. petted rabbits and chicks and a donkey named Mr. Sprinkles
6. played The Chicken Hokey, where we put our beaks in, took our beaks out, took our beaks in, and shaked them all about - as well as right wings, left wings, tail feathers, and whole chicken.

If truth be told, I didn't do all of these things.  In fact, the only ones I actually did myself were the hay ride and the goat cuddling.  But I watched the rest, and soaked up the sun, and loved every minute of a magical afternoon.

A few weeks ago I made a list of my goals for this second year at DePauw, and as I like to make my to-do lists in multiples of five, my list has five major goals on it:

1. host the Ethics and Children's Literature conference - done!
2. see if I can edit selected papers from the conference into a book
3. write an Indiana-inflected children's book
4. plan for a new wonderful life as I go back to Colorado at the end of this year
5. savor every Indiana/DePauw pleasure as fully as possible while I'm here.

Yesterday I did number five on this list for all I was worth. It was a day of mega, joyful savoring.