From The Mother Earth News Fair - Part 1

This was my third year attending the Mother Earth News Fair at Seven Springs mountain Resort in Pennsylvania. I have to say, it gets better every year! And it grows every year. There were so many excellent seminars and interesting vendors that I think I'm going to have to write about it in parts. This being Part 1.

We booked our cabin at Kooser State Park last January. It was the same cabin me and my sister stayed in last fall only this year there were six of us staying there. My husband and I, my sister and her husband, and our parents. It's a small cabin, but we made it work just fine.  Here we are (well, minus me - taking the picture, of course, and my husband who still had to work) on our arrival at the cabin Thursday evening.  We wanted to get there a day early to get all settled in, build a campfire, and just enjoy being in the mountains.

DAY ONE - FRIDAY

The fair started at noon on Friday.  We, of course, got their early.  I know from previous fairs that the best seating is had from getting there early.  I could hardly contain my excitement!  The first seminar I attended was on Perennial Herbs by Tammi Hartung.  I have to say, I really enjoyed her talk.  She spoke slow enough that you could take tons of notes (I like taking notes), and showed lots of pictures.  We learned about all sorts of different perennial herbs (of course), their uses, and how to grow and incorporate them into your gardens.  And while her book was gone by the time I made it up to the bookstore, it was definitely on my homesteading bookshelf wishlist.  I ordered it as soon as I got home, love it, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in perennial herbs.   My mom and sister both attended this seminar with me.

Next I headed up to a Crafting Herbal Salves seminar with Sue Morris of Sue's Salves, a fellow Pennsylvanian.  She gave a brief intro to making herbal salves, showed a great video of a walkthrough of her herbal garden, and also passed along her salve making recipe.  I picked up a piece of comfrey root, which she brought in from her garden.  I planted it last weekend, and to my surprise, it's already growing new shoots!  With the weather cooling off, and being past the fall equinox I hadn't expected it to do much of anything until next spring.  You can imagine my elation to see that new little leaf sprouting up from the ground, and only after a few days.  I suppose that just speaks to the healing power of the plant.  We later purchased some of her comfrey salve, as I didn't think I would have a chance to make some of my own until spring.  I've already used it for a skin abrasion and was amazed and how quickly it healed.  I'm sure excited to have this plant in my garden now.

My 4 o'clock seminar was on (Medicinal) Mountain Roots of the Appalachias.  Seeing a theme here?  I am currently completing a course in field botany online, geared towards identifying medicinal plants.  My main focus for the fair was to learn as much about these plants and their applications as I could.  How interesting to learn of all the plants locally available to heal us.  I imagine that this was something that generations before us already knew.  How quickly we forget with today's 'modern' medicine.  I didn't get to stay for the whole talk, though, as my husband surprised me with his early arrival!  We walked around for about a half hour as I acclimated him with the location of the various stages.

We finally ended up back outside for our last seminar of the day, Planting By The Moon, again with Sue Morris.  What a fascinating talk.  I knew that the moon influenced many activities here on Earth.  That was evident as I watched the changing tides during the few years I lived on the east coast.  Initially I would have thought that it was a bunch of hocus pocus, but it makes complete sense.  Afterall, if the moon can affect the oceans like it does, how could it not affect other living organisms.  We are 70(ish)% water.  I will be curious to see how planting by the moon changes the outcome of my garden from hear on out.

So there's our first day in a nutshell!  There was so much to see.  I was so glad that we had another two days to meander around the vendors between our seminars!

A Homesteading Weekend

Last weekend was great!  My sister and I had fun from beginning to end.  If you didn't catch the last post, we attended the second Mother Earth News Fair at Seven Springs, PA.  Talk about homesteading and sustainable living galore.  They had everything from livestock and cooking, to foraging and hammocks.  Seriously folks, if you can thing of it, there was probably a lecture or workshop on it.  In fact, there was SO much to do and see that it would have taken you a week to see and attend everything (if you had a week).  We had to do a little strategic planning to figure out what we wanted to see and when.  They great thing about going with my sister was that we pretty much were interested in the same things, and outside of maybe two lectures, we took in the same information.

So it was great from the start!  We had booked a 'rustic' cabin at Kooser State Park for the weekend.  I'm glad we made our reservations ahead of time, as I think every single cabin was spoken for.  Let me say, for 'rustic' we sure made out pretty darn well:



Other than the absent bathroom, it had all the amenities you could ever want.  Seriously, I think I could live just fine in one of these if it had a water closet of sorts.  We got all settled in, made some dinner in the wood stove and spent the evening folding and waxing origami stars, pickin' on the strumstick, and chatting up our excitement for the upcoming day.

Waxed Origami Stars

The next morning we arrived at Seven Springs by 8:15am, hoping to get a close parking spot (which we did).  The outdoor grounds were opened by 9am and my sister seemed to make a beeline for the livestock.  I don't think it was intentional; maybe some unseen driving force, or the subliminal whisper of, "over here."  Whatever it was, she made it to the meat rabbits in break neck time, and by 9:15 had bought herself a pair of Silver Fox does and one buck from Mule's Eared Farm.  Well that was fast.  We happened to run into Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm (one of my favorite authors and bloggers) purchasing herself a Silver Fox doe.  She was one of the keynote speakers at the fair that weekend.  We were able to attend two of her seminars on Raising Meat Rabbits (I guess that was fitting, seeings how we just bought three) and Living A Sustainable Life.  Both were great.  She's a great speaker as well.  Before I forget, here's my sister, happily holding one of her new rabbits:

A girl and her rabbit.

Well, that's all i have to tell for tonight as my computer is about out of power!  And I suppose it's past my bed time.  I'll share more hopefully later this week (I've only just touched the tip of the iceberg), as well as my preparations for the Johnny Appleseed Festival coming up in my home town this weekend.

Mother Earth News Fair 2010

This past weekend I attended the first ever Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, PA. It was a blast and I heard that there were over 10,000 people who attended! I would believe that; it was quite crowded. They had a little bit of something for everyone, from crafting and fiber to new wind turbine designs, beekeeping, bread baking, and chickens. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I love watching the working dogs! I don't know if there will ever be any hope for my Old English Sheepdog, Kenai. I've never seen them actually used in herding, but he's got the instinct. I asked this lady above if she'd ever seen an OES herd before, and she said, "no", and indicated that they were harder to train. I would believe that; Kenai is quite stubborn though VERY smart. I've also read that they herd more by size than stare, like the Australian Shepherds and such, and require more interaction from their handler (unlike the Aussies). I still love my OES most! They are great dogs, none the less.

Above is a newer design for a wind turbine called the WindTamer. It is supposed to create a vacuum that makes harvesting the energy from the wind more efficient. Or at least that's what I've gathered. It was neat to watch how it swayed and angled itself with the direction of the wind. There was virtually no sound either! This could be promising as it seems that many have complained about the noise that the larger turbines make with their massive height and blades. The WindTamer does not have to be placed at such a great height either. I will be interested to receive information from this company as we have dreams of being off grid....one day.