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News and Updates from Sanborn Mills Farm
— June 10, 2022 —
Available Workshops: June and July
Here are the available workshops that continue the 2022 season at Sanborn Mills Farm, June through July. Click on the workshop title to learn more and to register. Please note that workshops often fill early. (Workshops that are already full are not listed.) Click here for a month-by-month calendar of 2022 workshops at the Farm. Full workshops can be wait-listed.
The Spirit of Art: Color: June 17-19
Blacksmithing Basics: June 24-26*
Natural Dye Basics: Fresh Leaf Indigo and Pigment Extraction: July 7-9
Flax in the Field: Growing, Harvesting, and Processing Flax for Handmade Linen: July 13-14
Flax to Linen: Handspinning Flax into Linen Yarn: July 15-16
Blacksmithing: Creating in Copper, Brass, and Iron: July 16-17
Stenciled Floor Cloth: Intermediate Stenciling: July 23-24
Rice Paste Resist: July 25-29
*Blacksmithing workshops typically fill very fast, so the availability of this workshop is a rare opportunity. Don’t miss it!
Visiting Sanborn Mills Farm
With the arrival of warm weather, spring blooms, and long lazy mid-year days, we are receiving many requests from people who would like to visit the Farm. We love having visitors and talking about our mission here to teach traditional crafts and farming methods while sustainably using our fields and forest resources for workshops and events. To that end, we have substantially revised our Visitor’s page on the Farm’s website. Before you send a request to us to visit, please take a minute to read the information on the website.
We offer a variety of options for visits:
1. Visitors may view the farm from the public road at any time but are asked to keep out of all buildings and off the dams.
2. We have an open house scheduled for Sunday, July 24th, 2022, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (see below). Both mills will be operating (provided we have enough water) and there will be demonstrations in all the other buildings including the Blacksmith Shops, the Wood Shop, the Loudon Grange, and the Sanborn Barn. A contribution of $10 is suggested to be used the scholarship funds for workshop participants that have demonstrated need.
3. Group tours can be arranged for between 10 and 20 people for $10 per person and can last up to 2 hours.
4. Individual tours with a staff member (usually Colin Cabot, SMF’s founder) can be pre-arranged and can be focused on particular interest (the mills, the architecture, the gardens, the fields and forests, animal traction power, etc.)
5. Individual tours without a staff member can be arranged with the office at the main house in advance by calling 603 435-7314 but visitors are not permitted to enter any building without a staff member. A contribution box and guest register can be found near the visitor parking area.
Please remember there is still active construction underway at the farm and that it is an active working farm with animals and equipment often working close to the road.
If you would like to schedule a tour, please call Mary at the Farm office at (603) 435-7314 or email us at info@sanbornmills.org.
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Come See Us on Open Farm Day, July 24
Make plans to visit Sanborn Mills Farm on Sunday, July 24, when the Farm will be open for visitors. Demonstrations in our water-powered sawmill, water-powered grist mill, as well as demonstrations of working with oxen and horses, will occur throughout the day. In addition, the gardens will be open and our gardeners will be on hand to answer questions.
So circle Sunday, July 24, on your calendar. The Farm will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and we’d love to see you at Open Farm Day this year. Suggested donation for Open Farm Day is $5-$10 per adult, with funds going toward the Sanborn Mill Farm scholarship fund.
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Book of the Month
What We’re Reading in June
“In some Native languages,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, “the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us.’”
Originally published in 2013, “Braiding Sweetgrass” has reached best-seller lists as a result of extensive and glowing word-of-mouth. Kimmerer, who in addition to being a Native American and the mother of two daughters is also a botanist, encourages her readers to rethink the usual way western culture relates to the environment. Animals and plants and natural systems, she writes, are our oldest teachers. She notes that the English word “bay” is a noun, confining a natural feature into a static category best reserved for dead things, whereas the Ojibwe word wiikwegamaa turns the concept into a verb meaning “to be a bay” and thus “releases the water from bondage and lets it live.”
The braid of sweetgrass, she writes, “is woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most.”
Kirkus Reviews calls “Braiding Sweetgrass” “a smart, subtle overlay of different systems of thought that together teach us to be better citizens of Earth.” It’s already a favorite of some of the Sanborn Mills Farm staff.
To learn more about Robin Wall Kimmerer and to order “Braiding Sweetgrass” directly from her website,click here.
www.sanbornmills.org
Photo Credits
Photos by Steve Bjerklie.
Cover of “Braiding Sweetgrass” courtesy Milkweed Editions
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.