Harvest Fest, 2009: A Novel

Well the Harvest Festival last weekend was a rousing success! Mostly. I mean, it was, but the weather on Saturday kept our attendance numbers way down, unfortunately. With a 100% chance of rain, we were pretty much sitting in a cloud all day. But the weather Sunday was absolutely BEAUTIFUL and we had tons of people come out. Look!

There was a hay maze in the livestock barn, hay rides out to the garden and back, lots of children's activities in the garden, a farm stand and pumpkin patch, more kids games and things in the education barn, plus folks out in the Global Village talking about their sites, and doing an activity in each one.

I spent Saturday in Guatemala making coffee. And when I say "making coffee," I mean starting with a fire and unroasted beans. Handily enough, the house in Guatemala has a wood burning stove (which I was excited to get to use), so the rain didn't bother it much. It actually ended up being quite warm and cozy after a while. There was a troop of Girl Scouts that came and helped out all weekend, so I had a couple of them there with me, plus three adults (in the morning) who were fun to talk to. Two of them were a married couple who had spent a lot of time in the Peace Corps, so I felt under pressure to make a good fire, and I am happy to say that I did, and did so with one match. Rock! So after the fire got going and got the stovetop heating, we put some unroasted beans onto a skillet-like thing called a comal and stirred them around with a wooden spoon until they got dark and started to smell like coffee.

Depending on how hot the fire and the stove were, that took anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Then the roasted beans were put on a stone called a metate and ground up as fine as we could get them. This depended a lot on how patient we were feeling and how much we took turns.

Then the grounds were put into a coffee pot on a stove and we waited for it to percolate. I don't think I ever had the patience to wait until it actually boiled. Jen, the girl who was there on Sunday, waited a full hour at one point for it to boil. So, being impatient, whenever I felt like it, I could pour up a cup and drink it!

The resulting coffee was pretty light in color, pretty weak in flavor, and had bits of the grounds in it, but otherwise it was actually pretty tasty. And I'm not being sarcastic. It tasted like the beans were not too far from green-ness. And then Jen did it all again on Sunday.

Also, I hope you noted the "Guatemalan" outfit. Each site has a bin with clothes and stuff in it for use during big events. Let me show you some more!

Sam was in Thailand on Saturday pounding and winnowing rice. His foot is on the handle of a big rice pounder (the other end of which you can see in the other picture) which breaks the husk away from the kernel of rice.

Then, once the husks are broken up, you put it all in a basket and toss it in the air. The heavy rice falls back down into the basket while the lighter chaff blows away.

Meanwhile, Jen was in Peru on Saturday wearing this outfit:

Jason, in the middle doesn't like playing dress up. Abby was in Peru on Sunday, threshing amaranth. We'd harvested a bunch and hung it up to dry, then she rubbed pieces between her hands, letting it all fall into a pot. She then poured that pot into another pot, letting the wind blow away the chaff, much like rice.

Jason was in Tibet on Saturday but I didn't get his picture. He wasn't dressed up anyway. Sam was there Sunday, grinding barley with a barley grinder and making tea. His jacket pretty much amazes me. Especially the fake leopard fur.

Nic was in Ghana both days, making fufu. Fufu is made by mashing plantains and casava roots together and cooking them. Nic had the biggest mortar and pestle I've ever seen in my life.

Ivy was in Appalachia both days, roasting pumpkin seeds. They were amazingly delicious. I almost couldn't stop eating them.

And here she is, looking American.

Susan was in Kenya on Sunday, playing games that Abby (who has lived in Kenya and was there on Saturday) taught us.

And I was in Poland on Sunday. (Susan was there Saturday.) There is a woman from Poland who lives nearby, and she and her daughter usually come to festivals at the farm and bring a lot of stuff. She was wonderful to have there, talking to folks. There were also a couple of spinners there on Saturday, but I didn't get down to see them. But here are the inside and outside of my Polish house.

Next to the house, too, we had a draught horse hooked up to a grain grinder. It was pretty cool.

Meanwhile, on the other part of the farm, there were farmy things happening! We had a farm stand both days. Here are Sarah, Ben, and Emily on Saturday.

They had different vegetable varieties out, plus POTATO STAMPERS!!!!! That I helped make!!!!!

There was a much sunnier farm stand on Sunday.

Sarah worked the pumpkin patch, Maggie ran kids' games, and Emily was in charge of the "Plant a Bean!" table, at which people could plant a bean to take home with them. It was aptly named.

There was a hay ride.

And, even more exciting, there was a hay maze! Y'all remember those giant wagons we stacked hay in and pulled the giant blue tarp over? Yeah, we took them completely apart. But for a MAZE! And after the wagons were empty, the walls still weren't tall enough (they were all five bales high!), so we kept loading up truckloads from other barns. We worked on it for days.

And we ended up with this!

It's seriously the best hay maze I've ever seen. Did I tell you we all kept making wrong turns in it even while we were building it? Yeah, it was effective. But what made it super awesome was the presence of animals! Smaller animals like rabbits, guinea pigs, and chickens were in smaller cages that were actually part of the walls, and then there were pens for baby goats and sheep built in, too. I think they spent the whole weekend trying to eat their way out.

And last, but certainly not least, as part of the Harvest Festival this year, the farm celebrated its 25th birthday! Shon, the farm's head dude, made a speech and led us in a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" both days, then we got to eat delicious cake!

Liz Jo and Ben (who dressed alike, coincidentally) were super excited.

THE END!