Country Charm

Country living charm. After almost a decade in Washington, D.C., we moved to a substantially smaller area in Pennsylvania. Green hills dotted with farms. Black starry skies. 

Five years later, I am still delighted by small-town living. While I can't find French-Thai or Ethiopian cuisine or swanky, posh lounges that overlook marble monuments, I can find a Penny Fair. An honest-to-goodness, we'll take your copper Lincoln-head coin for payment Penny Fair. Are you serious? I wanted to hand him a twenty. SO excited. 

We stumbled upon this Penny Fair one Saturday in a churchyard. Everything was a penny. Everything. Including the entrance fee into the petting zoo. Fluffy baby chicks scrambled round like a pillow fight. Ducks sloshed through a water basin, now slippery for small, eager hands. Little girls in cotton-candy colors clutched kittens tight to their middles. Pigs snuggled in the mud. A llama eyed us from afar and my youngest kept calling him "camel." A chocolate calf lay nervous beside her owner. Lashes long. 

My girlfriend once told me before my big city departure, "Oh, honey, I just can't picture you in mud boots and garden gloves. Unless they're Prada." I laugh at that image. As I now laugh at the fuzzy chicks that tease my boys in this charming country life of mine.