Mo's Home Town

As many of you know, Mo grew up in a small town in Southern Ontario, deep in the heart of dairy cattle country. Ingersoll established the first cheese factory in the region and in 1866 the town produced the first mammoth cheese weighing in at over 7000lbs. The cheese was exhibited in New York and Britain; it was immortalised in the infamous poem "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds" by James McIntyre, a Canadian poet.

When I mentioned to my niece that we should go to the Cheese Museum in Ingersoll, she stated: "That sounds boring". You can't really argue with that. Recently there was an article in the local paper about how the Cheese Factory Museum had to change its sign on the highway. Apparently most tourists visit thinking they will see a working cheese factory, with samples and everything. Instead it is a bunch of implements and newspaper clippings regarding cheese making in the region. The museum was accused of false advertising.

Every year there is a Harvest Festival in Ingersoll and this past weekend we all dropped by to check out the various activities. Here are some of the things we did:

We rode the miniature horse taxi:

We sang the song "I like big butts and I cannot lie..." Here are LL and MRK doing a little dance to the song. There is nothing more hilarious to a 4 and 5 year old than saying "butt" 4 million times, it is always funny.

We made scarecrows:
We walked on stilts: or we tried to:

We went swinging:

We went fishing:

We actually watched some of the harvesting activities:

We played in the park - look no hands (you will notice on FMK's bulldozer there is a spray painted Star of David, on the other car is Swastika - interesting choice of tagging). We were all really good and there were no meltdowns: the fearless foursome - FMK, AV, LL, and MRKWe did not eat this, but I took this image for our friend AMP - just in case she is missing the fine fare in Amman. And after the day was done we went back to the farm and picked baby tomatoes with our mittens on, as you do in Ingersoll in the Summer . . .