What is your idea of a magical night?
Mine consists of: being with my husband, a pizza farm, sweet honey, crazy bats, a friendly donkey, an adorable goat, goat milk lattes, sweet friends, Indian summer temperatures, and a full Harvest Moon shining over fields of corn. A magician is cool, too. Not to be too specific or anything, but a magical night for me is something like that.
How do I know?
This magical night actually happened.
Yep, my friends, you better believe it.
When I saw Candice G.'s shining review of Heritage Prairie Farm, my farm-loving heart wondered why I hadn't heard about this earlier. I said two words to my husband, "PIZZA FARM," and marked the calendar for one of the remaining pizza dinners for the year.
Last week Thursday, we navigated through terrible rush hour traffic (my husband's car nearly died ten times from the unusual heat and sitting in traffic way too long) to this little farm on the outskirts of the suburbs. We were a bit cranky, but once we arrived, the stress melted away as we soaked up the farm-y fresh air. THIS was worth the drive.
After greeting Candice (of course she was there again for another pizza farm night!), we dashed off to order our pizza. My husband and I usually can't agree on pizzas (he wants loads of meat, I want loads of veggies), so we agreed to split a traditional pizza. The pizza is made in their barn-house brick oven and uses fresh and organic local ingredients -- some from the farm, and some from other places. It takes about an hour to make (the place was filled with people ordering pizzas).
The pizza was so good. SO GOOD. SO FRESH. I'm salivating now, thinking about it.
I also bought an iced cinnamon honey latte made with goat's milk. It. WAS. AMAZING. I drank it way too fast and was itching for another one right away. (It's probably a good thing I didn't get another one... I stayed up too late and another drink probably would have kept me up all night.)
During the hour that we waited for the pizza, we wandered around to check out the farm. It's actually a really small farm but it's absolutely lovely. Fields take up half of the property, while the farmhouse, a barn, an outdoor eating patio, a grassy yard, a ceremony area (for weddings), a beautiful event tent, and parking covers the rest. Bees are kept somewhere too. We even found a little pumpkin patch with some huge pumpkins on the vine. A fire pit surrounded by white chairs is available for use as well -- the fields behind it are a great background. I could see myself sitting there with friends, drinking a beer and strumming a guitar with my shoes kicked off. But alas, I didn't have my guitar. And a family had taken over. Maybe another time. Finally, tucked in one corner is a little fenced area for a goat and donkey. The goat was being his usual goat self, but the donkey was the sweetest donkey I'd ever seen! And his name is Christophine! We fell in love with him.
Heritage is definitely a little country escape near Chicago. It's peaceful and romantic (it's a popular wedding spot), yet very family friendly. Kids were everywhere and a magician was walking around. The magician didn't do anything awesome while we were there, but he did manage to entertain the children (oh my gosh, so many children) pretty well with some hypnotic spinning thing. Normally, places overrun with children kind of irk me, but I barely noticed them here. I was so mesmerized by my plant and food and animal surroundings that I kind of forgot about people. Oops?
After we finished our pizza and the sun set, we stuck around a bit longer to visit the donkey again, watch the bats fly around, look around the store, and marvel at the moon. The store has a good selection of several different kinds of flavored honey (with samples). They also have some vegetables and meats for sale, along with books and gardening tools. I ended up purchasing a jar of cinnamon honey. YUM.
Everyone at the farm was so friendly and knowledgeable. At the end of the night, some of the girls working there even let us wash our hands in the kitchen sink after having our hands covered with donkey saliva and sticky honey. We felt so welcome, almost like family.
All in all, this place almost made me wanted to get married again just so we could throw a lovely wedding on the grounds. (Almost. I didn't see the point in divorcing my husband just to marry him all over again and spend more money in the process. Just visiting here with him is good enough.)
PLEASE check this place out! It isn't too often in the 'burbs that you get to play and eat on a farm, especially a farm as magical as this one. This is certainly a hidden gem that needs to be uncovered! read more