This year’s Full Moon Party here at Rookie’s Gamble Farm was huge success, despite everything that mother nature threw at us. I don’t know why it ends up on the coldest day of the year, but it does… every year!
As the midwinter is upon us, it’s easy to hide inside from the snow and the ice, we instead we celebrate it, and brace ourselves for the remaining weeks of winter in Upstate New York. We bundle up in Carhartt’s, grab a near frozen beer and stand as close to the fire as we dare.
This year I was expecting a reprieve from the bone chilling cold we have seen in years past. All month it was over 30 degrees in the daytime, not warm, but comfortable with a jacket and a hat. Who am I kidding? It was hard to convince the kids they even needed a jacket! When I started stalking the forecast, I thought it was a cruel joke, high temps of 30 replaced with single digits for the day of the party. Then the news started reporting “Wind Chill! Stay inside! Frost bite! LOCUSTS!” (ok, no locusts, but seriously they were talking like it was going to be the end of the world.)
On the day before the party, with 20 mile an hour winds, and single digit temps, it kinda did feel like the end of the world. Knowing the wind would die down and the temps would hit double digits, we opted to push through, and surprisingly the vast majority of our guests did the same! When we got up at 4am to put the Mutton on the grill in negative 10 degree weather, I did question our sanity, a bit, but we live in Upstate New York, you can’t live here and be afraid of the winter! By afternoon the bonfire hit about 30 feet high and it was practically tropical standing around it.
This was our seventh annual bonfire. In the snowy winter of 2017 some beers, some xc skis and a drunken half naked Scotsman (honestly, is it even a party without one?) we had our first full moon party. Axe throwing was added in year 2, which was also the first year the kegs froze. Frozen kegs and axes? Sounds like a party to me.
This year was the biggest party we threw. Friends, neighbors, colleagues, customers, bonding over a beer, smores and the misery of living in a place where the air hurts your face. Somehow we convinced Paudy @ptimoneymusic to return to play guitar all night in the unreasonably cold weather.
It was a blast to stand by the fire with friends old and new, a few people did some xc skiing, we threw axes thanks to Generation Axe, and sang some of the best songs the 90's could produce. The smoked mutton (lamb) turned out perfect. The potluck side dishes were amazing. And the full moon watching over us was magical.
If you would like to join next year we would love to have you! Bundle up and watch for tickets to become available in December!