Journey Seeds

Sunday Music

We were at Tyrone Farm yesterday...

Public House

Marc Friedman (who also plays in The Slip)

Geoff Scott

Fiddle Contest

The New England Fiddle Contest is happening tomorrow.  Paul Lemay who founded the festival died this year.  I got to talk with him in the early years...he was inspiring, motivated, down to earth and a dreamer...we need more dreamers...and doers.  I've been going to this festival since the first one!  Back in the day it was a huge event that happened in Bushnell Park with thousands of folks attending and having a big 'ole huge fiddle fest party.  It's alot smaller now but, somehow it seems with the turn of the world enjoying simpler times that perhaps people will start to learn to make more of their own music.  Music is a daily part of our lives and it wouldn't be the same without it.  So, I'm excited that the fiddle festival is happening and I can go and sit among the footstomping sounds that I'm striving to find once again.

What's been brewing...

Beerbrewing was undertaken...

Cosmos blooming...

Music was performed by E at The Space...

We went to the Rhode Island Sustainable Living Festival

Entrance to the Festival...E & P...

Jay Mankita

Mark Erelli...

Red Molly...

Patti Larkin...a moment....

Crooked Still...

United Plant Savers...this is a great organization if you are interested in protecting native medicinal plants.

flea market & cheese

vintage chair from the flea market

ladies hankies

field guide to garden flowers

We went to Beltane Farm  to their cheese tasting sundays....

Flowers in our gardens...

Iris

Oriental Poppies

Mountain Music

Heres To The Long Haul played at our local collective last night. They play grassroots Appalachian Music and also bring awareness to the injustice of coal mining and mountaintop removal in the south. There was a good turn out of folks and we had a chance to have some nice conversation with the band. I spent the night knitting squares for the Codepink banner while listening to the band... to be hung in Washington on Mothers Day. 

We closed in the stage this weekend. We still need to paint the front bottom panels. It's starting to fade nicely into the woods.  Now the front can be removed for shows when we aren't using it for something else.  I think I'd like to have a day of mountain music wafting through the trees.  

Cold Antler Farm had this link to Fightened Rabbit a Scottish band playing Old, Old Fashioned.

Stilting

E at Earth Day Celebration at Uconn...that's her in the middle.

E and her oldest friend M...they've been adventuring since they were 3 months old!

Wakeup! Handmade Pleasures

I am reading a great new little book called  Made from Scratch by Jenna Woginrich.  It's about discovering the pleasures of a handmade life.  It's an introduction book written by a 26-year-old web designer and her adventures in living a simpler life.  I am enjoying it thoroughly!  While there isn't alot of new things in the book for me...what it has done for me is reawaken those feelings I had for the things in my life that began as a young girl back in the 70's.  I love her enthusiasm and her matter of fact way of writing about those new things she is discovering along her journey.  I have been doing many of those things that Jenna writes about for a long time now but, somehow the pleasures in it all have waned lately for me.  I feel unfocused and out of touch with what is important to me.  It has reminded me that I am indeed living those dreams that I started out with at an early age but, have turned them into more of a grind and chore and a race to get something accomplished.  It also has made me keenly aware of what you feel at age 26 changes over a lifetime.  It is important to stay in touch with those dreams...even if some of them have shifted over time.  

My favorite chapter in the book is the one on Mountain Music.  When I was about 10 I took up the fiddle and played for 12 years everyday.  I loved Celtic music and mountain music the most.  I travelled to Scotland and studied at The Sterling Institute with great Scottish Masters in fiddle music.  I even lived in the Shetland Isles and learned to play music with Tom Andersson the great Scottish fiddler.  It was a heady time for me.  We travelled around, went to music festivals, taught kids in schools and went to the pubs at night and played in many a celidh.  I stopped playing music when I went to Nursing School. I don't know why...it just happened.  At one point I took up Recorder playing for awhile and even took lessons.  Then, about 7 years ago my husband gave me a beautiful mountain dulcimer.  I took lessons from Carrie Crompton...a local dulcimer player for awhile.  I never got very far.  I think my hands started to hurt me when I played.  I tried playing for too long and wanted to practice too quickly for my own good.  I miss playing music.  It was such a huge part of my life when I was younger.  Jenna's book has made me want to pull out my dulcimer again.  Even if I can only scratch a few tunes out of that box it would make my heart sing to be able to play again.  I need to learn to not be too hard on myself though...I need to just learn to play a few songs again and see where that leads me.  I wish I had stayed with playing the fiddle all those years ago and I know it's not too late to pull it out again.  There are few genres of music that speak to me like mountain music...the roots and stories that it holds...the deep sadness that it can touch...and the lively foot stompin', body shakin' joy that it can generate...nothing quite like it!  Thanks Jenna for stirring up some old feelings....Read about her adventures over on her blog at Cold Antler Farm.

Interestingly enough the Nikki McClure calendar came in the mail today.  It's entitled "Wakeup!".  I ordered it late.  She is one of my favorite artists and the prints are beautiful to frame.  Wakeup seems to be a good sentiment for the season in many ways...

Music & Knitting

We went to one of our very favorite places to hear music yesterday.  It's a private farm.  Our friend hosts amazing music in a beautiful old barn that has a hanging chandelier in it!  The farm is run on solar power, is  organic.. and is a tapers dream to record music.  Club d'Elf was there yesterday.  Since it is such an intimate gathering place it's like we are all old friends when we see each other there. Here are some photos from the day.  It was a beautiful day...knitting and music.

Simple Sunday Collage

Earth Day

Flickr Photos

Growing Food

Punkrockpermaculture had this over on their site.

Vananda Shiva on Growing Your Own Food ~ One Million Gardens