Shall We Turn Back the Clock? A Visit to the Martyn Farm Fall Festival

And yet there was a time, not long ago and not ideal like some imaginary Arcadia, when our very real grandfathers lived for something other than themselves, and life was more honest, much more hard and worth living. Shall we turn back the clock? --John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture

A cozy farmhouse with a wraparound porch, a Jersey cow with a voluptuous udder, dulcimer music in the air--these are just a few of the things we enjoyed Saturday at Armand Bayou Nature Center's Martyn Farm Fall Festival.

We arrived about 8:45 a.m., and Emma slipped past ladies in pretty bonnets and long flowery aprons to open the front gate and enter the farmhouse yard. It might as well have been a time machine, with the gate hinges moving the gears of time. They creaked, turned, and meshed at 1900 A.D. Emma was transported back and was immediately at home. She set up her spinning wheel on the back porch, breathing deeply and admiring the view of the bayou.

She would fain have stayed and stayed, but she had to go to another part of the park to dance. Starting at 10:00, her Scottish Country Dance group performed six dances.









In the meantime, I learned that the spinning demonstration was supposed to be in the pole barn, not the back porch, so after the dancing, we hurried back to the farmhouse and hauled everything to the new location.

There Emma contentedly demonstrated spinning on her Ashford Traveler. Two ladies were spinning with drop spindles, and two were quilting. Quilts hung on the walls, and several antique fiber arts machines lined the back of the room: a spinning wheel, a small floor loom, and a tapestry loom.

Lots of families visited. As Emma taught little girls how to spin, I remembered how an older lady at a sheep shearing taught her. I wonder if some mama got an earful of drowsy spinning wheel chatter-- interspersed with yawns--on the trip home, as I did so many years ago.

Several of the Scottish dancers came by. Luckily, the McClarens were there when Emma realized that she had lost her threading hook. Mr. McClaren and his oldest son improvised one out of a paper clip. They bent. Emma tried. After the third or fourth adjustment, they had the bend just right, and it worked. It's so nice to have a man (or two) around the pole barn!

Emma also got to help some ladies spin and enjoyed it thoroughly. One of them was so excited after she tried it, you would have thought she had just won her dream vacation. Emma told her that next she needed to go to Upstairs Studio and talk to Clarice. In the picture below, Emma helps Mrs. Dugas, who had some previous background with spinning.



Sam, Scottish dancer and wandering fiddler, tried the spinning and quickened the atmosphere with his lively tunes. He suggested that Emma was remiss in not having completed projects to display. She obliged as best she could by switching to knitting, though she expressed disappointment that she did not have any wooden needles. (She also thought that the plastic chairs detracted from the atmosphere, but she remained cheerful.)



As the clock neared 1:00 p.m., I sent Emma to enjoy the festivities with the rest of the Scottish dancers. Here's some of what she saw:







Thomas, a Scottish dancer with a pocket knife and a sugar cane, generously sweetened Emma's afternoon!









We returned to the pole barn around 3:00 for Emma to do some more spinning. I noticed that Thomas's brother Aaron was fascinated with the rhythm of Emma's pedaling. He put his foot up to one of the pedals and thoughtfully mimicked the movement until he was actually pedaling with her. Emma said that he was right on time.



Aasron's desire to synchronize with the spinning rhythm reminded me of my longing for the Catholic agrarian lifestyle--a lifestyle dependent on the rhythm of the seasons and the liturgical year, a lifestyle that best prepares one to pedal with God.

Scottish Country Dance Ball: A Reel Good Time

Music and dancing, hoop skirts and kilts, Emma's first SCD ball was a wonderful experience. Hosted by the Houston District of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society in the ballroom of Rice University's student center, the event featured The Katy Ceilidh Band. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Emma took the opportunity to wear this beautiful cloak that is a "hand-me-down" she received from a friend a couple of months ago.

The ball began with a Grand March. The lady on the far left, Rebecca Blackhall-Peters, was the guest teacher for this year's ball workshop. Emma took the basic workshop and is looking forward to taking the advanced one next year.Emma and her friend Thomas processed into the ballroom together.

A waltz opened the dance program.

Then the feet began to fly.


What a wonderful, wholesome way to spend the evening!

Dashing, yet oh-so-courteous young men lent an other-world feeling to the ball.

I was told that the gentleman with the beard even mows his yard in a kilt.

I love the detail on the back of his jacket and the top of his socks.

The little dancers were really impressive. They all go to the SCD homeschool classes, which are a mix of age groups. Emma attended the one in Sugar Land. There is also one in Tomball.

Taking a break to visit on the sidelines.

Some of the homeschool boys hammed it up after the ball. The girls posed also, but I missed it as I was juggling a video camera as well.

What can I say? They're just too cute!

Still flushed from all the dancing, but sooo happy.

Don't you know that their mama is proud?

The homeschool teens had an impromptu sing-along outside the ballroom before leaving for the after-party at the Marriott. They belted out What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor and The Mermaid.

The Ball and Modest Dress

I went through my pictures and cropped out some examples of how the homeschool girls dressed. For the most part, they wore hoop skirts and long gloves and had fans stashed with their purses.




Modesty is beautiful!

Harvesting the Golden Treasure of Our Bee Pastures

"We are getting near," said Gandalf. "We are on the edge of his bee-pastures." --J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, as quoted on page 47 of First Lessons in Beekeeping by Keith S. Delaplane


We all vibrated with excitement yesterday as we gathered around the bee man on the side of my parent's house. It was about 6:30 a.m. The plan was to remove a feral hive of bees, steal their honey, re-locate the bees to a box hive, and have a lot of fun. The plan was accomplished.

Lighting the smoker. It's stuffed with a piece of old denim.

Smoking the girls. It didn't calm them down a bit.

Finding the bees. We lucked out. They were right there under the house, not up in the wall.

Mr. Keenon gives Nathaniel instructions for working with the bees.

Nathaniel gets assistance from Emma in tying a knot for the headgear as he warns me not to take pictures of him.

Nathaniel and Ryan prepare to meet their destiny.

Mr. Keenon presents the girls with the first chunk of honeycomb.

Dividing up the delicious golden treasure.

They consumed it right speedily, though it presented a dreadful etiquette dilemma when it was time to spit out the wax.

Isn't it lovely?

Ryan passes Nathaniel a large piece of honeycomb.

Mr. Keenon points out the queen cells on the edge of the comb.

Ahh, the succulent beebread, sweet, with a slight hint of citrus.

The hive that Emma built is being filled with honeycomb and bees. It appeared that the hive had swarmed recently, so there weren't nearly the number of bees that we were expecting. Mr. Keenon said that it might not be enough to make a successful hive.

Nathaniel threatens me with a glare because I am taking too many pictures of him, but I bee not afraid.

I think Emma may be sampling the dark comb with last year's honey.

Time to clean up. Honey had drizzled all over Ryan as he lay under the hive, and he got stung 13 times. I was really surprised that the smoke did not calm the bees more. I have a theory, though, that since they appear to be Italian bees, they are most likely Catholic--which means that if we had incensed them instead of smoking them, they probably would have gotten down on their knees and prayed, rendering them amiable instead of angry.

Nathaniel gets help removing the gloves, which he borrowed from Mr. Keenon after he got stung through the ones that came with our bee kit.

After we brought the harvest into the kitchen, Emma picked off the remaining bees, put them in a jar, and returned them to the new hive. Mr. Keenon told Emma not to move the hive more than ten feet a day away from the bees' original home.

Poor Emma! She didn't have time to shower before ballet and realized as she tried to brush her hair in the car that it was dotted with honey where bees had landed.

Today we will squeeze the honey out of the combs, filter it, and put it up in jars. We'll save the wax to make candles!