Spring is coming.

Today's tale begins on an incredibly windy day in the Boso. Other than the crazy winds, the clouds were gorgeous clear...at least for the first half of the day. So off our merry little crew went to check out Mother Farm (マザー牧場) down south. It was a pleasant hour or so drive from Chiba City.

Spring has come!!

Our main mission was to see the nanohana (Chiba Prefecture's official flower!). We were actually a bit too early - the hills pictured in the top two photos of the above collage are actually the smaller locations for prime nanohana (rape blossoms) viewing. There's another hill which hadn't bloomed at all when we went, but we were able to catch the last of the plum blossoms and daffodils!

On the bright side, it looks like right now (this week?) might be prime season for the nanohana. Mother Farm updates their website every 1-2 weeks with the conditions of the flowers in season. You can check out the nanohana here (unfortunately, this info is only available on the Japanese version of the site though): http://www.motherfarm.co.jp/location/flower/rape-blossoms.php

Mr. fluffy sheep! You can kind of tell just how windy it is by how our hair and his wool are getting tousled around.

These fellows were waiting just by the entrance to welcome visitors...and there was a pretty good crowd despite the terrible winds!

A jumble of fun.

This is just a quick intro to the many different activities you can enjoy at Mother Farm. To be totally honest, we couldn't enjoy a lot of it because the wind was so strong we were dying to run inside for cover for every 10 minutes we walked outside.

Starting from the top left, counterclockwise:  (1) feeding baby sheep, (2) rows of jizo statues at a temple onsite, (3) more feeding baby sheep, (4) sheepdogs decidedly hanging out on top of their sheep buddies, (5) baby pig race, (6) horse sign.

One of my favorite parts of visiting a new place...new NOMS.

For some reason or another, I hadn't been able to eat breakfast that day, so I was starving rather early on in our visit (I'll blame part of it on the energy needed to battle the winds). Thankfully there are yummy cafes strewn all throughout the park. I had a yogurt drink and lamb hamburger sandwich, both of which were absolutely fantastic.

For the record, there are Mother Farm Cafes outside of the park - I've previously been to ones at the Mitsui Outlet Park in Kisarazu and Lalaport Tokyo Bay shopping mall in Funabashi. I know they offer a similar selection in drinks and soft serve ice cream, but I don't remember what they have in terms of actual food.

I partook in this beauty later on in the day - strawberry cheesecake parfait soft serve ice cream! It is as epic as it sounds.

After our energy levels were restored, we continued our trek through the park and stumbled on a small building offering a variety of hands-on activities:

Pretty paints!

Take a dish of your choice and create your own unique masterpiece!

...and that is indeed exactly what we did. You'll receive a...half-baked dish (need to be careful because apparently if you grip it too hard, it'll shatter!). You paint on the design of your choice, hand it back to be glazed and fired, and voila! Your masterpiece is complete. The 7 paints picture above are available, but you can't overlap/mix colors because they won't set correctly.

Carefully planning the design...

...and leaving it to artistic genius!

Thus new treasures is born.

It only takes about 30 minutes for them to have your work glazed and fired. They'll also nicely wrap up your work to lessen the danger of being harmed along the way home. Hurray!

What a haul! (props if you can guess what anime that's from)

Various things I picked up at Mother Farm, including a block of black pepper cheese (top center), a bin of cheese and shio-koji in olive oil (top right), and a giant half loaf of fresh bread from the rest area on the way home! Most notable is the candied salted tomatoes pictured in the forefront...which oddly enough, taste quite similar to raisins.