I can’t believe it! We are right around the corner from the longest day of the year – June 21st. Do you know what that means? From then until December 21st every day of this year gets a little bit shorter. It feels as if someone turned up the treadmill speed while I wasn’t looking. And it’s times like these that I understand the value of ‘living in the moment’ so again I make that mid-year resolution to do just that.

Which brings us to our Summer Solstice Celebration – the 8th one so far. It’s a fair amount of work for our small crew particularly after a very busy Spring but we want to celebrate the year. We also want to show everyone how to stop and smell the roses as well as thank our customers for their continued support. It’s nice that we have a farm to do this on. It might help call to mind a simpler life style.

This year our focus is on food – preferably the home-grown or locally grown variety. Don’t confuse the term ‘simpler’ with the word ‘easier’. Growing your own food makes your life simpler because all the work involved in planting, sowing, watering, de-bugging, weeding, harvesting, and preserving eliminates all those other consumer focused activities that currently fill up our days. But on Friday night the l9th of this month we will make it easier and simpler to enjoy that harvest.

We have invited Mark Williams, the Spirited Chef and organizer of Slow Food Bluegrass, to come and offer picnic style fare with the emphasis on locally grown. He will be serving grass-fed beef burgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs and locally grown salads along with fresh cobbler, Elmwood Inn iced tea and organic lemonade. Come and support Mark and Slow Food Blugrass. The price is right, the food is great and it’s the green thing to do.

New this year! A Garden Hat Contest! Thieneman’s encourages creativity and we will be rewarding that effort with a $50.00 gift certificate. Be a horticultural fashionista and come strut your stuff. Judging takes place at 8 p.m. (Judges names will not be released prior to contest to prevent lobbying efforts.)

For the Next Generation of Gardeners we will have veggie coloring books, we’ll be planting seeds and Bernheim Park representatives will be there offering encouragement to kids to Get Outside! A bedtime story, “What the Wind Told” will be read at 9 o’clock and a bedtime snack – smores could also be found around the fire-pit.

Entertainment will be provided by the String Chickens and they are promising a new twist to their musical endeavors this year.

As always this will be the first big SALE of the year so come prepared to find some bargains.

Come and have some fun. Stuff gets crackin about 6pm and we won’t stop until midnight. Whew!