Now, I relish a good day’s hard work as much as anyone.
I’m like a donkey who’s happiest when she’s pulling a cart.
And I *almost* (keyword: almost) won our farm staff’s “biggest stick in the mud “award this year.
But now it’s time to play.
Because the Blacksburg Holiday Parade is this Friday at 7:30 pm in downtown Blacksburg.
🦢🥕And our float is the best!
Yes, I used to be like you, poo-pooing holiday parades.
“Ugh, the crowds!”
“Grr, the cold!”
“Yuck, the gaudy!”
But now I see our handmade parade float as a vehicle for fun and for good.
🥕🦢🥕
Picture this…a giant carrot-colored goose (recipe below).
👩🏼🌾Us, your very own handsome farmers, handing out sweet potatoes and carrots instead of candy (you don’t like candy, anyway).
😎And as much propaganda as we can project to indoctrinate your innocent children into believing eating vegetables is cool (which it is).
You’ve got to see us to believe us.
Recipe for Glade Road Growing Parade Float
Ingredients
- chicken wire
- old 2×4’s found around the farm
- 1 bag Portland cement
- used bed sheets from farm crew, stripped into strips
- donated paint (Thanks, Spectrum Paint in Blacksburg!)
- pine and bittersweet trim cut from the farm fencerows
- bows and sparkle from Anne, the Flower Queen
- string lights, power pack and trumpet player from Baseline Solar
- borrowed flat-bed trailer from Bell Electric
- bins and bins of Glade Road grown sweet potatoes & carrots
- farmers, farm kids, and groupies to march and hand out the swag
Directions
Start talking about your crowd-wowing and never-done-before parade float ideas in July with the farm crew when it’s summer and the weather is nice, and you have plenty of time to work on the float.
Actually start working on the parade float the week before the December 5th parade, when it’s freezing and you’re tired from a whole season of farming. Save time by dressing up last year’s float.
Patch the holes in last year’s goose by dipping strips of cotton bedsheets in thin cement over the frame of 2×4’s and chicken wire JP threw together for you last year. Let the cement dry (mostly) until you have to start painting, because otherwise you’ll run out of time to paint.
On the day of the parade, call your buddies from Baseline Solar and Bell Electric, who actually have the trailer required for the float and the power pack to light it up. Thank them again profusely for all that they do for you, not just last-minute on parade day, but all year long. Assemble goose, greenery, and bittersweet with lights on the trailer.
Hope that Anne, the Flower Queen, will happen to walk by that day and be drawn in by the greenery and take pity on you, and offer some glittery bows and ribbons from her personal decoration collection.
Dress up in your warmest clothes, grab the kids and head downtown in the tractor, which is pulling the float at a speedy 7 mph from Glade Road to the Turner Street line up downtown.
Hope all the farm crew that did lots of parade talking in back in July shows up now in the cold dark downtown to help you hand out your hard-grown produce. Be elated when they show up in force.
Remind the farm kids that they’ll get squashed if they walk in front of the tractor and to stick to one side of the road to hand out their sweet potatoes to parade goers.
Remind parade goers that sweet potatoes are, in fact, edible and you can microwave them.
Finish the parade at Eheart Street. Double-count that you didn’t lose any kids on the way. Go to Sugar Magnolia for celebratory ice cream (hey, candy might be bad for you, but ice cream is not).
Drive back to the farm at 7 mph in the dark with the float. Allow 1 hr plus driving time.
On the following morning, walk downtown with your kids to do some Christmas shopping. Notice some discarded sweet potatoes, scuffed and left haphazardly on the sidewalk. Hear your little ones’ slight gasp of disbelief. Answer their puzzled expressions honestly. Don’t try to sugar-coat it; kids are excellent at recognizing a lie.
“But mom, you don’t think these are OUR sweet potatoes, do you?”
“Son, there’s a one hundred percent chance those are our sweet potatoes.”
“But…why??”
“Some people just aren’t there yet. Yet“.
🍠🎄❄️🎁🥕Happy Holiday Parading from the farmers at Glade Road Growing!