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News and Updates from Sanborn Mills Farm
— April 15, 2022 —
Upcoming Workshops: April, May, early June
Here are the workshops that will open the season at Sanborn Mills Farm, beginning in April. Click on the workshop title to learn more and to register.
Draft Animal: Oxen Basics: April 29-May 1
Natural Dye Basics: Natural Indigo Vats with Extract: May 5-7
Natural Dye Basics: Mordant Dyes on Cloth: May 12-14
Blacksmithing Basics: May 20-22
Beginning Spinning on a Spinning Wheel – Spring Session: May 21
Stenciling Basics – Stenciling Placemats: May 21
Draft Animal: Working Oxen on the Farm and Garden: May 21-22
Rug Hooking: May 21-22
Blacksmithing Basics: May 27-29
Indigo Shibori Dyeing from Itajime, Arashi, Nui, Kumo, and Beyond: May 30-June 3
Sew Something Special – A Week with Great Fabric, a Machine, and a Community: June 6 – 10
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Meet Sandra Kehoe, Basket Workshop Instructor
“Basket making has connected me deeply to the roots of our ancestors and the miraculous connection to the natural world around us,” says Sandra Kehoe, who will teach willow basketry at Sanborn Mills Farm in July. “Basketry is as old as humanity; a universal skill that over the centuries presented both as an essential hand craft and expressive art form. It’s a skill that remains alive and well today, although lost among the fast pace of ever evolving technology.”
She is based at her own Willowbrook Basket Farm in the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York. She studies the craft of basket making across mediums but works primarily with sustainably farmed willow and willow bark. For her workshop at Sanborn Mills Farm, she will use sustainably farmed willow grown here at the Farm.
“The most rewarding part of my work is getting to teach. I love introducing the craft of willow basketry to people who have never worked with their hands to create something both beautiful and functional,” she tells us. “There is something magical about your first basket, and I love being able to guide students on this journey of discovery.”
To read our full interview with Sandra, click here.
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Spring Veggies Are Sprouting!
Thanks to the warmer weather and hard, careful work by our farm crew, many of the 35 varieties of seeds we save have begun to sprout. Salads soon!
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Book of the Month
What We’re Reading in April
The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: Food.
In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, former New York Times food writer Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments, from slavery and colonialism to famine and genocide—and to our current moment, wherein large-scale industrial agriculture exacerbates climate change, plunders our planet, and sickens its people. Even still, Bittman refuses to concede that the battle is lost, pointing to activists, workers, and governments around the world who are choosing well-being over corporate greed and gluttony, and fighting to free society from industrial agriculture’s grip.
Sweeping, impassioned, and ultimately full of hope, Animal, Vegetable, Junk reveals not only how food has shaped our past, but also how we can transform it to reclaim our future.
For more information and a link to independent bookstores, click here.
www.sanbornmills.org
Photo Credits
Photo of Sandra Kehoe courtesy Sandra Kehoe.
Spring sprout photos by Lea Rossignol.
Cover photo of Animal, Vegetable, Junk courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Sanborn Mills Inc. | (603) 435-7314 | info@sanbornmills.org | www.sanbornmills.org
Hands-on education in traditional craft and farming: Inspiring the future with tools from the past.
