Hooray for Fall! Fall is one of our favorite times of year in Chapel Hill NC. The weather is beautiful, the Fall colors are breath-taking, and every year we look forward to visiting our favorite local North Carolina pumpkin patches, farms, and corn mazes.  (See our CHillKids.com Chapel Hill Pumpkin Patch Guide to read about some of our favorites.)

Yesterday we had a great time working our way around (and around) the AMAZING corn field maze at McKee’s Corn Maze (on Cedar Creek Farm on Kiger Rd. in Rougement, NC, near Hillsborough, NC.)   McKee’s Cornfield Maze offers a wonderful way to spend a Fall day of family fun outdoors. The maze includes a 12-acre cornfield maze, AND a 2-acre children’s maze. Every year the McKee family creates a beautiful farm image that is then cut into the rows of corn to create a gigantic aerial-view living work of art.  From an aerial view the maze this year features a tractor and the words Fall Family Fun; when you run around inside the maze you can figure out your bearings based on your mental image of the cornfield’s design. Going along a circular path we realized we were in the tractor’s wheel.

In prior years, we explored the 2-acre children’s maze (instead of the 12-acre maze), as the children’s maze is the perfect length for families with little ones.  There are checkpoints hidden along the maze where you can punch the next number on your maze card – great fun for everyone to seek and discover all of the punch-hole stations!  There are signs along the way based on the alphabet to help you keep your bearings in the children’s maze. There are more signs along the cornfield path including pictures of geometric shapes, colors, and other cheerful signs for children to discover along the maze paths.

However yesterday we ventured into the main cornfield maze, with our five children (ages pre-school to 6th grade), and split up into two groups to find all of the punch hole stations among the 12 ACRES of cornfield paths. My husband used his GPS to track his distance/time, and he logged in over 5 miles, in about an hour and a half. (He did a lot of back-tracking rounding up pairs of our kids back into our two groups.)  We all had a great time searching for the punch-hole stations hidden in recessed areas of the maze, and meeting lots of other nice people along the way. My six-year-old son especially loved to escort people to a particularly hard-to-find station that he had discovered.

After we found all of the cornfield maze stations, we went back to the tent area and the kids played on the playground, in the sandbox, and visited the goats, donkeys and other farm animal friends. (They also have picnic tables under the shady trees near the playground area.)

Perhaps BEST OF ALL, my husband pushed each of the kids in turn on the rope swing in the playground area. Our kids look forward to visiting McKee’s Corn Maze every year, and the rope swing at McKee’s is one of their all-time favorite swings. (As always, an adult should supervise the swinging.  Rope swings can swing close to the tree(s) so we don’t let our kids push one another on the swing. Instead we do the pushing on rope swings.)

The tent area features farm-fresh produce and goods, beautiful PUMPKINS, and, last but not least, everyone’s favorite freshly scooped Mapleview Farm Ice cream!  mmmmmm …. Pumpkin Pie ice cream at the end of a wonderful Fall day at McKee’s Cornfield Maze. Perfect!

McKee’s Cornfield Maze is located at Cedar Creek Farm
5011 Kiger Rd
Rougemont, NC 27572
919-732-8065

Visit McKee’s Cornfield Maze online for hours, admission, and more info.

Have fun!

Coon Rock Farms
A Sustainable Family Farm on the Eno River

Fall & Winter 2011 Community Supported Agriculture (“CSA”) Subscriptions

Today at Whole Foods I picked up a subscription flier for Coon Rock Farm; it sounds great! You can sign up to purchase 22 Weeks of Fresh, Local Produce (starting in October 2011). Meat and Egg CSA also are available.

Coon Rock Farm offers delivery locations throughout the North Carolina Triangle in Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough. The number of CSA subscriptions is limited and allocated on a first-come, first -served basis so get your application and check in as soon as possible!

To sign up, visit www.coonrockfarm.com.

You can also find Coon Rock Farms produce and goods Saturdays from 8am – 12pm at the South Estes Farmers’ Market (Chapel Hill University Mall, in the Southern Season parking lot at S. Estes near 15-501). Coon Rock Farm also sells their produce and goods at the Western Wake Farmers’ Market in Carpenter Village in Cary.

Coon Rock Farm also has an on-farm market every Saturday from 10 am – 12 pm for customers who want to visit the farm for freshly picked produce fresh from the farm!

We are looking forward to visiting Coon Rock Farm; we’ll post photos when we go!

August 2011 update: Toots  & Magoo has MOVED to University Mall and is no longer located on Franklin St. Be sure to check out Toots & Magoo’s beautiful new shop in University Mall! Toots & Magoo is a beautiful shop in Chapel Hill, NC offering the most wondrous works of art, gifts, and lovely things to comfort and delight.  Toots & Magoo is the kind of respite you will love to visit and explore for hours.

I have a very dear and special connection with Toots & Magoo, through my wonderful friend Sarah. I met Sarah one sunny day in a cobblestone courtyard in Aix-en-Provence, France. I was around 19 or 20 years old, playing my flute in plein air, listening to the acoustics and echoes in the sun-drenched courtyard in Provence. … I haven’t done that in a LONG time. (And yes, I WISH I had learned to play the guitar back then, instead of the flute!  Guitar players are de facto cool; not so much the flute.)  But thank goodness I did strange things like playing my flute out and about in France, because if I hadn’t been such a strange bird, Sarah probably wouldn’t have been inspired to come and introduce herself that day.

The Courtyard of the building where I lived in Aix-en-Provence (the famous Place d’Albertas), and my quick sketch from that time – sketched on the back of a little brown paper bag.

Sarah and I spent the rest of the day together, walking and talking along the beautiful paths and streets of Aix-en-Provence. As dusk fell we gathered up a delicious dinner from various markets and fromageries along the cobblestone streets of Aix (probably some LU Bastogne cookies, too). We had dinner together, and talked all night into the early hours of the morning, two American girls in France, one from the East Coast  and one from the West Coast (Sarah).  As it turned out we both were studying at the same university in Aix-en-Provence, and we had the same Art History class the next morning.

After talking with Sarah all through the night, poring over her wonderful childhood photographs and sharing our life stories and adventures, I got home in time for a few hours of sleep before class.  After I arrived in the 17^th century building where our Art History class was held, I saw Sarah slink down the classroom aisle into an empty seat. She was still wearing her pajamas. I laughed out loud, and smiled through the rest of the class that morning. The adventures that followed that year in Aix, with Sarah and all of our friends, were wonderful and many.

Billy Pearson (1940′s photo); the Inspiration for Toots & Magoo

Among my favorite memories of conversations with Sarah are the vivid stories she shared with me about her amazing father, Billy Pearson; about his adventures, his joie de vivre, his passion for art, his larger than life personality.  Just to begin with, he was a famous jockey in the 1940’s and 1950’s (he won 826 races around the world, and suffered – and miraculously recovered from – many racetrack injuries as well).  He went on to live LIFE to the fullest, many decades of adventures, all of which are far too numerous and incredible to begin to mention here.

At the time I met Sarah, her father was established as perhaps the foremost collector of American Folk Art and other art treasures from around the world. Sarah had hanging on the wall of her beautiful sunny apartment in France a quilt that was made of antique jockey silks.  It had been a gift made for her father many, many years prior.  It was perfection. (What other students studying in France had rare, beautiful American Folk Art on display in their apartment?) I was fortunate to meet Sarah’s father briefly, and his wife Maggie (“Magoo” of Toots & Magoo) and their charming little daughter (Sarah’s half sister), when they came to visit Sarah in Aix-en-Provence that year.

I was delighted to be reminded of Sarah and her dad Billy Pearson tonight when I visited the Toots & Magoo blog: http://tootsandmagoo.wordpress.com/who-are-we/

There Toots & Magoo have posted fantastic photos of Billy Pearson, along with a wonderful piece crediting Billy Pearson as the inspiration for Toots & Magoo. I hope you will visit the blog, and visit their shop now located in University Mall on 201 S. Estes Drive in Chapel Hill, NC 27514.

I have often thought about how I wish my dad could have met Sarah’s dad; I think they would have hit it off immediately.  My father was a brilliant artist/sculptor/architect with roots in Kentucky; the Kentucky Derby was always a BIG day for us growing up.  Among his many beautiful sculptures, my father sculpted absolutely breathtaking equine statues, including his life-size, welded steel Don Quixote sculpture, located a block from the White House in Washington, DC.

(You can see photos of just a few of my father’s sculptures at www.jarbo.org – work in progress!)

1964 Washington Post Magazine cover article featuring the work of Miles Stafford Rolph, II (detail from silver chess set shown on cover; silver Greek Warrior chess piece approx. 3 in. tall).

Even though I’m not aware of my dad ever having met Sarah’s dad, somehow I feel a connection that links them together as kindred spirits in my own mind and memories.

My Dad, Artist and Sculptor Miles Stafford Rolph, II with one of his stunning sculptures (Polo Player on Horseback on a Marble Base).

I wanted to include a photo of my Dad here, so I scanned the photo I had on the closest book shelf (shown above): his welded steel sculpture of a Polo player on horseback. Then I scanned the photo next to this one on my book shelf: my Dad posing an artist’s wooden model figurine.  The wooden model reminded me of the ones I had just been looking at a few moments before in a picture of the former Toots & Magoo storefront, shown on the Toots & Magoo blog. I love the wonderful and unexpected juxtaposition and synergy.

Wooden Artist’s Model figures grace the Toots & Magoo shop front (from the Toots & Magoo Blog entitled “Our Lovely Store” (8/11 update: Toots & Magoo moved to University Mall in 2011); Vintage photo of my Dad posing a wooden artist’s model (just happened to be the photograph closest to me on the book shelf – so I scanned it in!)

On a closing note: Oh, Wow! I just found a Bing video of a Perry Mason episode, in which Billy Pearson plays the role of a jilted jockey on trial for a murder that he didn’t commit.  http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/the-case-of-the-jilted-jockey/17u6dn6vt

What a rare treasure!  And the stream-of-consciousness continues …

We hope you will visit Toots & Magoo in University Mall to find beautiful treasures and gifts, jewelry and fine paper/stationery (everything lovely!) and visit the Toots & Magoo blog and be enchanted by the photos and stories (http://tootsandmagoo.wordpress.com/gifts/)!

Have you ever spent hours (and hours) searching for those 4 or 5 items on your Back to School list (multiplied by each child) – but can’t find them anywhere?

Have you traveled from store to store looking for a pack of a specific number of Crayola pens/pencils/etc in a specific color or style or type, and still not found them?

Over the years it seems like there have always been several items for which we had to drive all over town (until we learned the ropes!) Since it can be difficult to find some of the most basic school supplies, I want to share with you our Back to School shopping tips. Here is our INSIDER GUIDE to finding your school supplies in Chapel Hill / Carrboro / Durham, NC.

Best Overall Selection & Shopping Experience:

Office Supplies & More (Chapel Hill’s INDEPENDENT Discount School & Office Supply Store)

Our Back-to-School favorite, Office Supplies & More, is located in the Timberlyne Shopping Center (between the Post Office and A Cleaner World) at 1129 Weaver Dairy Rd., Chapel Hill, NC. Office Supplies & More is an INDEPENDENT discount office supply store and back-to-school supply store, also specializing in just about every kind of pen, both functional and beautiful (they offer pens that are like works of art!), gifts and toys, and fine paper supplies and stationery.  They have among the biggest selection of Pens & Greeting Cards in NC (#1 sales for pens and greeting cards in NC)!

We have learned through experience over the years that Office Supplies & More has just about the best selection of EVERYTHING for Back to School supplies (and office supplies, paper and pens year round), with competitive prices, and excellent & friendly staff assistance.

Office Supplies & More can save you a BUNDLE of time! You can literally get in and out quickly, and find the quality products you need at great prices.

Office Supplies & More advertises some of the lowest prices on most pens in the USA; they always offer Teachers 10% off their low prices; and they offer SPECIAL BACK TO SCHOOL HOURS.

Office Supplies & More’s 2011 Special Back to School Hours:
August 15-26, 2011, M-TH 10-8; Fri & Sat. 9-6; Sun. 12-6

The online reviews for Office Supplies & More are excellent (just about all of them that we read were 5 stars.) One reviewer commented that Office Supplies & More is the best office supply store in the NC Triangle, hands down, and we couldn’t agree more! We especially appreciate that this is an INDEPENDENT store. (The store was originally founded in New Haven, CT in 1976, and later moved to Chapel Hill.)

You can make it a fun shopping experience with your kids! The friendly Staff usually have offered our kids a free treat or little gift (choice of a Silly Bandz, etc.) – a fun time for everyone. Also, Orangeleaf is just around the corner near the Post Office, and it’s fun to treat the kids to a special frozen yogurt treat.

More Back to School Supplies in Chapel Hill / Durham / Carrboro, NC

In no particular order:

1. Target: Target often sell out of key, basic supplies early on, so shop early to avoid the frustration and hassle of spending HOURS trying to find 2 or 3 simple items.

The Super Target on 15-501 has a Back to School area at the back of the store, but you may find even more of what you need in the FRONT of the Super Target in the Office Supplies section (near the greeting cards). We usually end up looking in both places – but it’s good to know about the alternate location for school supplies within the store.

The Super Target on Renaissance Parkway (near Southpoint Mall in Durham, NC) often seems to be better stocked for school supplies (also for Halloween costumes, etc.) than the one on 15-501. One year we couldn’t find a particular set of Crayola crayons anywhere, but they had them at the Renaissance Parkway Super Target in the office products area toward the front of the store. (This was before we had discovered Office Supplies & More – they probably had what we needed!) The Renaissance Parkway Target also has a Back to School supplies area in the back, and a separate office supplies area toward the front. Quite often you find more of what you need in the office supplies area (especially if you are shopping late and the Back to School area looks like locusts have descended, leaving barren shelves with a few packs of erasers here and there).

2. Office Depot (New Hope Commons, Durham, NC – shopping center located at 15-501 and Mt. Moriah Rd.) across from Barnes & Noble and Walmart. Office Depot sometimes sends 20% off coupons in the mail, and throughout the Back to School season in 2011 they offered a few key items for ONE PENNY. (This week, they had spiral notebooks for 1 penny. The nice checkout person told us that last week the penny item was wide-ruled loose leaf paper; then they sold out.) We usually end up spending too much time when we shop at Office Depot; we just have a hard time finding each of the things we need. (However, in our experience the Office Depot Staff have been very helpful. Just ask if you need help finding something and they will help you find it, if they have what you need.)

3. Staples – Franklin St., Chapel Hill, NC (around the corner from Whole Foods). Staples quite often offers discounts on back to school supplies. Convenient to downtown Chapel Hill; lots of parking.

4. Walmart – Standard back to school supplies; however the few times we have shopped there we rarely found the specific items/brands we needed.

5. A.C. Moore – Patterson Place on 15-501 in Durham, NC (Patterson Place is the newer shopping center located across 15-501 from New Hope Commons.) Ah, the AC Moore 40%-off-one-item coupon (delivered weekly to local residents in the Chapel Hill News insert). We used the 40% off coupon for a pricier item: the $20 adult size Fiskar’s scissors on the 6th grade back to school list. Of course we found a bunch of other great stuff too; all Crayola items were marked 50% off (8/23/2011).

Happy Back to School shopping!

More great things about Carrboro/Chapel Hill, NC: abundant locally grown produce (including produce grown without pesticides or chemicals), and Panzanella Farm Dinners! Panzanella offers special dinners (usually once a month), featuring locally grown farm produce.

Panzanella / Eco Farm Dinner
Featuring Pesticide-Free Locally Grown Produce from Eco Farm
Date: Monday, August 29, 2011
Time: 5:30 – 9pm
Place: Panzanella, Carr Mill Mall, Carrboro NC

On Monday, August 29, 2011 from 5:30 pm, Panzanella Chef Jim Nixon will prepare a delicious menu made with locally grown produce from John and Cindy Soehner of ECO FARM. Eco Farm produce is grown without the use of pesticides or other chemicals. John and Cindy grow arugula, basil, eggplants, pepper, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and lots more DELICIOUS organic veggies, fruit, flowers, and more.

Eco Farm was established in 1995 and sells their produce and goods to local shops and restaurants, at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, the Fearrington Farmers’ Market, the Southern Village Farmers’ Market, and the Western Wake Farmers’ Market

Take a gander at LAST YEAR’s Panzanella’s Farm Dinner featuring Eco Farm produce: (from the Panzanella website): “Last year’s menu included Pizza e Fichi with figs, prosciutto, mozzarella and goat cheese; Eco Linguine with sauteed shiitake mushrooms, Long Island cheese squash and Italian sausage in white wine cream sauce; Butternut Squash and Late Summer Vegetable Fritters with garlic aioli.” WOW! Yum!

The menu for August 29th will be available closer to the Farm Dinner date, and will be based on the produce available for harvest at that time.

Panzanella is located in downtown Carrboro, NC, in the historic Carr Mill Mall.

Visit Eco Farm online at www.ecofarmnc.com.

Learn more about upcoming Panzanella Farm Dinners.

2011 Panzanella Farm Dinner Schedule
June 27 – Perry-winkle Farm
July 18 – Peregrine Farm
August 29 – Eco Farm
September 26 – Chapel Hill Creamery

Next Up: On September 26, 2011 the Panzanella Farm Dinner will feature food from the Chapel Hill Creamery.