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We will list happenings on the farm, the
animals happenings, special activities,
and other occurrences that we have seen
and are excited to share with you.
Come
back often to participate in the
experiences that make LBL a special
place to share with others...
Read from the bottom of the page to
experience prior current calendar year
entries. The most
recent comments are at the top.
Monday, May 23
Well, since I wrote last,
the pattern of life at The Homeplace has
stayed pretty much the same, wait for
the ground to dry out, plow or work it
up, then just when you can plant it, it
rains again. Our corn is up and doing
well, Rob was able to get some broom
corn planted in the last week. Broom
corn is actually a sorghum that is used
in the making of brooms. Yesterday, I
worked with Bob the horse to work up the
garden to try to get a summer garden in.
Jonathan had plowed this ground a month
ago, but then it rained. Jonathan worked
up the ground two weeks ago, and then it
rained. I spent two hours in the garden
yesterday cultivating, harrowing and
dragging the ground and then...it
rained. Oh well, we'll get a garden in
sooner or later. We're just about ready
to plant cotton and set tobacco- if the
weather will cooperate.
The
ladies have been working on the woolen
fleeces that came from the sheep. They
have washed the fleeces and have had
them drying on the porch of the Double
Pen House. Jennifer has been able to get
some plants in the ground at the Dye
garden. Indeed, she cooked dinner
yesterday which consisted of pork
tenderloin, biscuits, spinach and sweet
potatoes. Maybe just maybe, we'll be
able to get some sweet potatoes in the
ground by the middle of June. Maybe.....
One unusual problem we're having is with
getting the chickens to go up at night.
This is due to the cicada hatch which is
out and about. With so much to eat, the
chickens don't want to go up to the dish
of cracked corn. Unfortunately this has
meant that some of the chickens haven't
been put up at night, and a few have
disapeared. On the bright side, with our
new brooder building, we'll have a great
place to house a clutch of chicks if one
of the remaining hens should choose to
set on some eggs.
Tuesday, May 10
Well it has finally stopped raining. Now
the heat is on. Today it is supposed to
be 88 degrees with a heat index of 92
degrees. But nontheless, there's a nice
breeze blowing through the hollow. With
the warmer weather, the sheep are very
glad to have had their shearing for the
year. They are much more comfortable
now.
Some farm work is
beginning to pick up as Rob was able to
cultivate the corn late last week. He's
also hoping to start working up some
ground for cotton and tobacco soon.
Jennifer is also anxious to get some
plants in the ground back at the dye
garden. They should look sharp with the
improvements that have been made to the
garden area.
The ladies have also
started working at the house with the
fleeces from the sheep. This wool will
be washed, carded and spun to make warm
clothes for the winter.
April 18, 2011
We've had a lot of
rain and some severe storms as of late,
which has yet to put us behind on
getting crops in, but has definitely
brought fieldwork to a halt. The rain
and warm temperatures have really helped
to get the garden, corn, tobacco, and
all the weeds you could want off to a
great start.
Work has continued
on the chicken coop and brooder
building. All the shingles used for this
project are made out of oak while the
boards for the brooder building are
poplar. When finished, the brooder
building will be used to house young
farm animals such as chicks, or pigs
until they're big enough to be out on
the farm.
A lot of work has
gone into the fence for the dye garden
and it is pretty well finished. The next
step will be to get more dye plants in
the ground. These plants will then be
used for dyeing wool for various
domestic projects.
Over the weekend,
Charlotte and Rebecca cooked a meal
making use of pork from the smokehouse
and spinach from the garden. Spinach
fresh from the garden. Spinach fresh
from the garden cooked down on a wood
stove and mixed with a smattering of
bacon and bacon grease is that much
better.
Preparations are
underway for the 5th Annual Quilt Show.
The event will take place April 29, 30 &
May 1. The staff have been busy with
preparing quilt displays for the event.
In particular for a special Saturday
night program at Golden Pond Visitor
Center. The program will feature Nedra
Bonds who will be speaking on quilts and
quilt history. The event will be at 7pm
and will cost $5 per person to be paid
at the door. If you like quilts, you
won't want to miss this!
Monday, April 11
As of late
we've had rain interspersed with periods
of unseasonbly warm weather followed by
more rain. The result of all this has
been that the leaves are greening out,
the flowers are blooming, and it's a
great time to be at LBL! We've had a lot
of people coming to visit The Homeplace
this past week with so many families
traveling on their Spring Break holiday.
So in addition to our regular farmwork,
we also schedule some Wednesday programs
which were quite popular. This past
Tuesday, Charlotte and Jennifer dipped
candles at the Double Pen House, and Rob
split fence rails with over 60 people on
Wednesday. Both of these programs
offered hands-on participation while
incorporating environmental education
messages on the use of resources in the
19th century.
Besides making fence rails, Rob also
has been tinkering with using white oak
splits to construct temporary gates that
could be used to fence the sheep out of
areas where they don't need to be. These
gates are based upon designs found in
Roy Underhill's books and the gates
themselves are very sturdy for their
simple construction.
Rob, Jonathan & Brian also have
been working on the corn field trying to
get the ground in the right condition to
plant. Fortunately the weather
cooperated and they were able to harow
the field off to get the dirt nice and
loose, drag the field to get it level,
mark off rows and get the corn seed in
the ground before todays rain. You can
see the planted rows in this photo taken
from the front porch of the Double Pen
House.
The rain has also been good to
the garden. Onions are up and the
cabbage is growing. Now if we can just
keep the groundhogs and other furry
friends away we'll be in good shape.
Come on out and experience LBL at
her best including the Homeplace.
Monday, April 3rd
The chickens
have been off-site for a few days as we
are about to have their coop re-roofed.
The oak shingles to be used were
actually split at The Homeplace last
summer and should be in the perfect
condition to be used for the project.
While the roof is being redone, we are
also going to add a shed to the side of
the building. This shed will act as a
brooder building to be used whenever we
have young chickens, pigs, or other
animals.
Near to the chicken coop, we are
also working to replace the fence around
the dye garden at the Single Pen House.
Jennifer has also been working to
replant the garden with a variety of
plant types which will be used for
dyeing wool the many colors of the
rainbow.
Also in the Domestic program,
the ladies have finished smoking the
pork for the year. Now all we have to do
is eat it. You should stop by and see
the hams, bacons, and sausage in the
smokehouse before it's gone!
Over the weekend, Jonathan
presented a program on Horsepower. As
part of this program, he had Bob out in
the front field and worked to harrow off
an area that had been planted in corn.
The harrow acts like a large comb and
catches the corn fodder laying on the
ground so it can be pulled off the
field. The next step for this plot will
be to plow it up to use it for raising
dark fired tobacco, by removing the corn
fodder first, it will not catch the
tongue of the plow and bog it down,
meaning overall it will take less work
to get the job finished.
Come to the Homeplace and
enjoy seeing the 1850s sights and
sounds.
9/23/2009
Fall is in the air! Smoke from the tobacco barn fills the nose
and the sound of blacksmithing fills the
air. Work on the farm, as far as crops,
is coming to an end. The ladies are
getting the last of the vegetables out
of the garden and pumpkins and cotton
are the only field crops that are left.
The pumpkins that have ripened are being
picked, washed and moved to storage so
that they can cure out without rotting.
The cotton, however, is still a month or
so away from producing bulbs. As far as
trades work on the farm we are all
really excited about the new blacksmith
shop that is now up and operational. It
has been in blast now for the last few
days and we have already begun to make
parts and tools that we will need to
bring the shop to completion. As I said
before, the shop is operational, but
still lacks a few finishing pieces,
mostly metal parts that will be made
here on site. This project has been
nearly a year in the making and we were
all pleased to see it finally fired up.
In the 30 years of Homeplace history
there has never been a permanent
blacksmith shop on site. Historically,
not all local farmers would have kept
and smith shop or even had the know how
to do metal works. In fact, from all of
our research there was never a forge on
this site. But there would have been a
local smithy on a nearby farm or in the
local town (in our case the town of
Model, TN just a mile south). However,
we felt it important to the
interpretation of the area’s heritage to
show some form of iron works. At this
time period (1850’s) Stewart County, TN
was the third or fourth largest iron
producing counties in the nation, which
means that iron was a very important to
the people and the area.
Coming up on the farm is one of our most popular special
events, the 1850’s wedding. This is one
of the few events that we do in first
person and is always enjoyed by all who
attend. There will be a mock wedding and
a load of different activities
surrounding the wedding. This will take
place on Saturday October 17th.
Hope to see you there.
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Brian Prather – Interpreter
8/25/2009
Well
the summer is coming to an end, as
signaled by the cooler weather and
cutting tobacco. Just this past week we
cut one of our tobacco fields and ran it
up in the barn. For those of you
unfamiliar with tobacco, let me explain.
When we “cut” tobacco we use a special
tool known as a tobacco knife. We use
the knife to split the stalk of the
plant vertically down the middle until
the split is about four inches from the
ground. Then we cut the plant down
underneath the split, so the plant is in
a ‘V’ shape. Then we hang the plants
upside down on sticks. “Running it in
the barn” means that we take it from the
field to the tobacco barn and hang the
sticks across the rafters in the barn.
Our other field of tobacco is still
about a week away from being cut.
However once it is cut and in the barn
we will start the firing process, which
is a six week ordeal where we fire cure
the tobacco in the barn.
Elsewhere on the farm, we have been
getting lots of vegetables from our
garden. The Trail of Tear beans and our
many varieties of heirloom tomatoes have
done especially well this year. Also in
the garden our fall beans are starting
to sprout and show good signs of a
healthy life. Our young fowl (ducklings
and chicks) are coming into adulthood
and are becoming indistinguishable from
the adults themselves. The sheep that
were sheared the first of May are once
again fat with wool.
Everyone on the farm is looking forward
to our next big event, the 1850’s Camp
Meeting reenactment. This event will
replace our Agricultural Fair that we
had done for the last several years. It
should be a good time. It will take
place on September 12 and 13. On the 12th
we will have trades people out on the
farm selling their wares to public.
There will also be games, music, and
much more. Then on Sunday we will
reenact an 1850’s camp meeting worship
service under a brush arbor with
preaching and singing. It promises to be
a unique experience. Hope to see you
there.
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Brian Prather – Interpreter
7/12/2009
Well,
summer is in full swing here on the farm
and the heat is not the only thing that
is rising. All of the field crops are in
and growing. Our Bloody Butcher corn in
the front field is already tasseled and
we should have mature ears by the end of
the week. This year we have two patches
of dark fire tobacco. In the field
adjacent to the corn the tobacco has
really taken off and will have to be
topped soon. The back patch (behind the
ox lot), however, got off to a slow
start and had to be reset due to some
fungus, but it’s starting to come on now
though.
And
last, but not least, the cotton is about
waste high and full of foliage. It will
be a few months yet before it starts to
put out bulbs, but the flowers it puts
out shouldn’t be too far away. If you
never seen the flowers on the cotton
plants, you should. They are beautiful.
They grow about 5 or 6 inches in
diameter and are yellow and pink.
Besides the field crops, our vegetables
and gourds are starting to make and
ripen and are pumpkins are starting to
put out vines.
With
all these crops coming in Bob (the
horse) has been very busy. He has been
cultivating several times a week with
the seven shoveled horse hoe, and the
double shovel. Jake, our other Pecheron
draft horse, has been on the mend
recently. Several weeks ago he came up
lame with an abscess in one of his
hooves.
There
has been some recent sadness on the farm
with the passing of our oldest sheep,
Nana the Border Leister. But every
ending makes way for a new beginning.
There is new life on the farm. The
chickens are raising 6 baby chicks born
at the end of May and we are raising 3
Black Cayuga ducklings born at the
beginning of June that will be full
grown adults in the next 3 to 4 weeks.
So
you can see that with all this activity
on the farm, we have all been keeping
ourselves busy and it only promises to
get busier. Some events to look forward
to are: The Art of William Sidney
Mount: America’s Rural Artist – July 18;
Making Cornshuck Dolls – July 29; Visit
with Grandma – August 2; Herbal Medicine
– August 9; 2nd Annual
Storytelling Festival – August 15. So
make a date and come visit us before the
summer sun makes way for fall winds.
-Brian Prather – Interpreter
4/30/2009
This
past week has been a busy one for us on
the farm. With the beginning of the warm
weather season, the work has really just
started. We spent most of the past week
in the big field in front of the house.
First we took the turning plow through
the field with Bob (the horse). This
helps to flip the ground over to expose
the soil and to bust up the roots from
all the grass that took over the field
in the winter and early spring. Next, we
used the full team, Bob and Jake, to
harrow the field. The harrow that we use
is called an “A” frame harrow. This
implement has iron spikes through the
slanted parts of the “A” shape and as
its drug through the field it breaks up
all the big clods of dirt that is left
behind by the plow. We run the harrow
through the field several times to try
to get the dirt as fine as possible for
planting. And lastly, we use a drag, or
flat bottomed sled, to smooth and even
out the field. Once all that was done we
planted corn and cotton in that field.
The
ladies were also very busy last week
with the Third Annual Quilt Show. This
year we had over 100 quilts on display.
The quilts were locally made and some of
them dating back as far as 1858. The
main focus of the quilt show this year
was friendship or community quilts.
These are quilts that were made by
groups of people and sometimes everyone
who helped on the quilt would sign a
single patch. We had so many visitors
for the show that we decided that next
year it would have to be at least 2
days, if not more.
With
summer coming on there is a lot of other
activity going on around the farm, so it
is a great time to visit. Here are a few
upcoming events: Sat. May 2 – Sheep
Shearing; Sat. May 9 – A Walk with the
Animals; Sun. May 10 – Mother Goose
Nursery Rhymes; Sat. May 16 – Fishing on
Pryor Creek. For more info on these
events and other upcoming events visit
www.lbl.org.
-Brian Prather
Interpreter
4/17/2009
Our
hands are blistered and our backs are
sore! We have been doing a lot of
shingle making this past week. Riving
shingles is a pretty straight forward
job, simple in its essence. We start
with what’s called a billet log. These
logs stand 24 inches tall and are
anywhere from 20 to 30 inches in
diameter. We use our mauls and wedges to
bust the log in to pieces small enough
for us to handle. Ours are made of
natural materials from the farm.
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A maul with metal head |
A wedge made of metal |
 These
are simply called billets. The logs that
we start with have to be as wide as they
are because of all the wood that has to
be taken off the billet before its ready
to be made into shingles. First we
remove the heart, or pith wood. This is
the center part of the tree. It is very
dense and hard to work, but it does make
excellent stove wood. Along with the
pith, the sap wood is also removed. This
is the very outside part of the tree
which is soft and would rot quickly if
put on the roof. From there we use a
tool known as a fro, which is like an
elongated wedge with a handle, and a
mallet to split the billets in half
again and again until they are the
thickness that we desire. We make at
least some shingles nearly everyday on
the farm, especially recently.
But
we’ll need all that we can make; there
is 10,000 shingles on the double pin
house alone!
-Brian Prather
Interpreter
3/31/2009
 This
past week on the farm the ladies have
been busy working on the loom in the
single pen house. This is a really cool
process to watch. Throughout the year
the ladies take old and worn out pieces
of clothing and cut them into strips.
They tie these strips end to end to form
a rope, and then use the loom to weave
the ropes into a rug. It is a great way
for us to get every last penny out of
our fabric. The ladies worked for
several days straight on the rug to
ensure that they got it done before the
mice could get to it.
Also we have been slowly taking down our
tobacco that’s still in the barn and
striping it. We haven’t been able to do
too much of it yet because it depends so
much on the weather and timing and we
just haven’t got the right weather. We
need it to be rainy and overcast for
several days in a row to bring the crop
into order so that the leaves don’t fall
apart while we’re working with and tying
them. We did however get a couple of
nights of good rain which brought life
back to our creek, which was enjoyed by
all, especially the ducks.
-Brian Prather
Interpreter
Forging on at the Homeplace
3/14/2009
 With
the ice storm damage behind us (at least
down Homeplace), we are moving forward
with our new projects. This year we are
really excited about our new blacksmith
shop. While it’s not completely
finished, we have recently taken some
big steps forward. The bellows was the
latest portion of the shop to be
completed. This, by far, presented the
biggest challenge. The bellows is the
tool that is used to push air into the
fire to increase the temperature of the
coals. There are two chambers inside the
bellows and it operates by drawing air
through the bottom as it is expanded and
then the air is forced into the second
chamber and the out the front nozzle as
the bellow contracts. This project is
the brain-child of Jonathan Ferrell and
we hope to have the shop up and running
in few weeks.
Elsewhere on the farm, the smell of
smoking meat fills the air and will do
so for the next 3 or 4 weeks. Our spring
crops (flax, tobacco, and greens) are in
the ground and starting to sprout. We
look forward to having the first
‘fruits’ in the next month or so. Some
upcoming events at the farm include the
Weaving Bee – March 21 and 22, as well
as Broom Tying on April 5. These are
just a few of the great programs
upcoming on the farm and we are open 7
days a week this year, so please come
see us soon.
-Brian Prather
Interpreter
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