Yesterday, friend Delores Tucker and I went to
Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill (known locally as Shakertown) for one of their "Christmas Teas." Of course anyone familiar with Shakertown knows how beautiful the buildings and grounds are. They were decorated subtly and naturally for the season, but I had to think that those decorations were for us today and the Germanic and decidedly un-Shaker adornments would have been unknown to the residents in the early 1800's.
The teas are held in the Trustee's house, where the hotel and restaurant are.
At the base of one of the famous twin spiral staircases, there was a beautiful - if un-Shaker - tree decorated and lit with fairy lights.
It was gorgeous, sitting at handcrafted cherry drop-leaf tables on ladderback chairs in the spare but beautiful room. They brought tea, scones, then country ham biscuits, cheddar pecan wafers (everything was tiny - this was a
tea after all), then tea sandwiches of country ham spread, chicken salad and pimento cheese, then date bread, pound cake and cranberry muffins. Then, as if that weren't enough, there was dessert! Lemon bars, chocolate turnovers and peppermint meringues.
photo by Delores Tucker
We rolled out of there - staggering a bit from the sugar high - and made our way on over to the Craft shop. We actually went there both before and again after tea, because there was something I wanted that I had forgotten to buy earlier. Both times we were greeted outside the door by friendly cats, who had the uncanny knack of posing for the perfect photo until the instant you were ready to click the shutter - then they would walk away.
photo by Delores Tucker
It was a very gray and rainy day, but the rain stopped while we were there. It wasn't too cold, and made for very pleasant walking around the grounds. We saw some of the cattle and 'took a turn' (tea was making me feel very Jane Austenish) around their herb garden, still producing, even this late in the season.
On the way home, we discovered a "bulk foods" store -
Kountry Kupboard - on Hwy 127 outside Harrodsburg. It reminded us so much of our trip a couple of years ago to Amish country in northern Ohio, and as then, we came home with
bags of food for very little money.
Shopping, eating (in an incredible setting), shopping, driving through beautiful countryside, shopping (for more eating) ....... my idea of a LOVELY afternoon.
