Our 5-year wedding anniversary was Memorial Day weekend! We spent Friday, our actual anniversary, at the rose garden after work, and on Saturday I met Nathaniel for lunch and we went to DC Vegetarian (my first time). Sunday morning, we headed to our farm stay Airbnb. I’d been looking forward to staying in this sheepherder wagon on a working sheep farm for a long time. It was everything I imagined it would be. We really did sleep in a wagon on the farm – just a really comfy bed and a bit of space for Cody on the floor. Our wagon was one of three, and the most secluded on the property.

I’m trying to remember what we did that day when we arrived, but it wasn’t anything major. Honestly, we just walked from room to room and from one area of the farm to another to visit with all the animals. After we’d been there an hour or two, there was a dramatic rainstorm that separated me from Nat and Cody and isolated me in the barn with the chickens, geese, turkeys, rabbits (and their newborn babies), alpacas, and sheepdogs. It was… so nice. It being May, the sheep weren’t up by the barn. We walked down the road to see the sheep (and their resident guardian dog/s), and we walked around the property and the orchard. Sitting on the “porch” of the wagon as it got dark, listening to the nighttime rain and for the owl we had heard in a nearby tree when we first arrived, was one of the loveliest moments I can think of in a long time.

In the morning, we sat in the classroom (a common space; fiber classes also take place on the farm) reading books about sheepherder wagons, drinking coffee and hot chocolate, and having fresh eggs for breakfast. Then we hung out with our host for a while, watching two kids fish around in the pond right outside our wagon for newts and tadpoles. When we left, we drove to the town of Philomath (pronounced FLOW-mith, not phi-lo-math!) to get a look around and grab donuts. We met a really wonderful cat, and that was that. We headed to Newport for the rest of the day, completely forgetting that we’d planned on going to Wilhelm’s mausoleum since it’s only open one day a year, on Memorial Day. Oh well – next year, maybe!