Mother Earth News fest has so much going on that I wish it was more than 2 days long. Or I wish I’d known about it sooner so I could have had off work and spent the whole 2 days checking it all out. 100% worth every penny!
Its so inspiring that not only does a fair like this exist, but that it is so well attended too. So when walking around you know you’re just surrounded by farmers/homesteaders, and those curious to become such to one capacity or another – be they small scale, large scale, commercial, survivalist, mentors, young or old, experienced and newbies – all just drawn together for the love of getting “back to the land”.
I’m feeling very grateful for this good day. Mother Earth News fair… I would have enjoyed it whether I had property or not. But whereas if I’d come to something like this a year ago, I would just be looking and dreaming, now I get to come and actually be dreaming and doing!
Frankly my mind is kind of exploding from the possibilities. Makes me glad to have established the contact with the extension agent for guidance, so that my excitement doesnt have me spread myself too thin trying to learn and do everything at once.
And special thanks to my former Natural Building Workshop acquaintance, Kai, for making the drive up here to NC bringing me my baby sea buckthorn, pawpaws and Chinese chestnuts ordered a few months ago. After what I learned about these plants just yesterday at lectures here at the fair I’m even more excited about this start up selection. Thanks for the hookup!
Joel Salatin’s lecture wrapping up the festival was such a helpful pep talk to anyone with farming ambition! Wow. I hope I can get a transcript of it somehow after the fact. So many of folks I know would love to hear/read it. So I found this link. – Joel adjusted some of the ways he illustrates some of the points here due to his audience (This lecture was presented to Idaho agricultural students in 2014, a bit different than the hippies and hillfolk of western NC), but it is the same “10 Threads of Success” he spoke on at Mother Earth News this past weekend.
Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbak1-RvBCg&noredirect=1
Middle Way Forest Farm 