Christmas Trees And Pigs And Goats, Oh My!

What’s the one thing you don’t want to do when acquiring a Christmas tree? Drink the goat water. We figured we couldn’t put off getting a tree any longer, so we went to Motley’s Christmas Tree Farm and Pig Racing Stadium on Sunday. Motley’s is chock full of holiday fun. There’s the petting zoo, the racing pigs, the shop full of Christmas-themed junk, the hayride and, of course, a field full of Christmas trees.

Abby wanted to feed the goats before we did anything else.

After getting a good dose of goat slobber on our hands, we went out to hack down a tree. Abby yelled “Timber!” as the mighty 5-foot Virgina pine, the monarch of the great old growth forest, crashed to the ground.

Then we skidded the beast by hand out to the road for the 90-second hayride. Abby brought her bucket and shovel in case we happened upon a beach out there.

After the hayride we were off to the pig races. The guy running the races had quite a stand-up routine to go along with the pig show. The pigs were all named after Santa’s reindeer. Abby got a big kick out of that. He let the swine race around the little track three times and Dasher won every race by several lengths. I asked him if Dasher always won and he answered, “No. Sometimes we switch up the names.”

With temperatures in the mid-50s we got chilled to the bone. The free hot chocolate was a God-send. A little kid in another group had a wall-eyed fit when he discovered marshmallows weren’t available.

Then it was home to trim the tree.