Medieval Faire in Salem

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This weekend was the annual Medieval Faire in Salem. We went yesterday. In the photo is Dame Dianna, The Royal Huntress and her dog, an Irish Wolfhound. While Dame Dianna and her husband were standing outside their tent, we could all pet the dog. He was so calm and sweet, and HUGE. Loved him!

"One of the earliest recorded references to Irish Wolfhounds is in Roman records dating to 391 A.D. Often used as royal gifts, they hunted with their masters, fought beside them in battle, guarded their castles, played with their children, and lay quietly by the fire as family friends. They were fierce hunters of wolves and the oversized Irish elk, so good that their prey disappeared from Ireland and the hounds fell upon hard times. By the 19th Century there were few IWs left in Ireland."
From AKC

For more info on the faire CLICK HERE

Friday Fences & Randoms

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Frontier Culture Museum
This little cabin had tobacco hanging inside but it doesn't look like a tobacco barn so I don't know. That is tobacco growing on the other side of the fence. Friday Fences

Now some randoms:

1) I am SO excited to hear that one of my favorite books will be made into a movie, FINALLY. I read the Big Stone Gap series years ago. I had heard a rumor long before we even moved to Virginia that there was a movie in the works. I even emailed the author and asked and she confirmed it. I have been patiently waiting since then. And then, last week in my Facebook feed I saw her post THIS! Yay, it is happening. And I'm so happy that it will be filmed there locally!

2) Bears! We have a mama bear and I've heard 2 cubs in our neighborhood. The boys have seen her on ocassion but I haven't. I have seen the proof when she's been in the yard. She picks our trash can right up and lifts it over a retaining wall to sort through in the front yard. The news has THIS to say about all the bear sightings in neighborhoods recently. I really feel sad for them.

3) I want a morning to sleep in past 7!

4) I yelled at our football coach at last night's practice. The boys won their game on Wednesday, 6-7. At practice last night, the asst coach was going through their warm ups then afterwards they all gather in a huddle to get stickers for best plays etc...instead he started to yell at them and said "I am NOT happy with that win on Wednesday. You did not give me the shut out win I wanted so you will run 6 hills". That really ticked me off as they were being punished because they did not score enough for him? I jumped up like a crazy mom and went to the coach who was just yacking with a dad and said "Really, they're punished for a win because it wasn't a shut out?" and he said that they were having to run hills because they weren't focused. Well that's not what the assistant was yelling about but ugh, and I wasn't the only one that wasn't happy with that. I just happen to be the only one with a big mouth I guess ;)

5) Oh, I watched a great documentary on Netflix the other day, The Dust Bowl. I really enjoyed it. It was very moving. What hard times those people went through.

Have a great weekend!!

Signs, Signs - The Liberty Tree

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Frontier Culture Museum

Signs, Signs

Rurality Wednesday - 1850's American Farm

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Our wonderful costumed interpreter.

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Hams curing inside the aging house. Some of these have been hanging in here for 2 years!

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There was a little kitty inside every exhibit!

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Inside the slave quarters. I don't know what that corn cob thing is hanging in the corner.

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Slave quarters.

This is the Riddlebarger Farm. It was moved from Eagle Rock in Botetourt County (the county I live in) to the museum. I showed you the outside HERE

"By the 1850s, the Valley of Virginia was integrated into an expanding national market for agricultural and manufactured products. An improved road network was supplemented by water and rail transport that permitted Valley farmers and manufacturers to easily ship their products to eastern cities. In return, manufactured goods from Europe and other parts of the United States became available to Valley consumers, and Valley residents no longer had to make their own textiles and other necessities. Mass communication, in the form of newspapers and books, made Valley residents more aware of events and ideas from the outside world. In this environment, distinctions among the white descendants of Old World settlers declined and most embraced a common American culture and way of life.

While the descendents of colonists from England, Ireland, and Germany were creating a common American identity in the Valley with each generation, slavery and inequality was the legacy inherited by the descendents of African captives. Enslaved African Americans formed nearly 20% of the region’s population in 1850, which represented a small decline from 1820, though the actual number of Valley slaves increased over the thirty-year period. The number of free blacks in the Valley increased only slightly. Compared with Virginia east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Valley slavery was modest in scope. Still, it was significant enough to be regarded with concern by some who thought it hindered the region’s economic progress, though most whites continued to support it."

Frontier Culture Museum

Rurality Wednesday

Inside The 1820 American Farmhouse

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Bowman name carved into door frame


"The Bowman House originally stood in northern Rockingham County, Virginia. The oldest section of the house dates to 1773 and was built either by or for a naturalized German immigrant named Georg Baumann who purchased 260 acres of land in what was then Augusta County in 1772. Baumann arrived in America in 1751, and lived in Berks County, Pennsylvania until the early 1770s when he relocated to Virginia with his son John. Early in Georg Baumann’s time in Virginia his name began to appear in official records as George Bowman." Frontier Culture Museum

Life in the 1820s American Farmhouse

"By the early 1800s, middling farmers in the Valley of Virginia were able to provide a comfortable lifestyle for themselves and their families. Such households were furnished with tables and chairs, coarse earthenware, pewter and ceramic tableware, chests, books, and bed and table linens, though rarely with fashionable goods such as mahogany furniture or porcelain. Virginia Germans often added cast-iron heating stoves and clocks to their household furnishings.

Activities in and around Virginia German farmhouses were reminiscent of their Central European heritage. Wives and daughters worked as hard as the men, and were known to assist the men and boys with fieldwork. In the house, women did the spinning and weaving and made linen and wool cloth that could be traded for goods at local stores or made into coverlets or rag carpeting. Meals prepared by German housewives were distinctive, and included dishes such as sauerkraut, scrapple, and raisin pies.

Anglo-American influences entered the Virginia German lives slowly. By the 1820s, English furniture forms, such as the chest of drawers, began to appear in their houses, and they became tea and coffee drinkers, and began using imported English dinner plates and teacups."
Frontier Culture Museum

I showed you the outside HERE

Inside The 1700's German Farmhouse

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Come along, let's step back in time to 1700 Germany...

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Christian thinks he looks good in the wooden shoes ;)

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Our hostess is explaining how she made sauerkraut in the crock.

I've shown you some of this exhibit HERE and HERE.

I hope I'm not boring you all with all of these pictures. I just really, REALLY loved this place and want to share everything we saw! I'll wrap it up by the end of the week, I think lol...

"Germans were the largest group of non-English speaking Europeans to settle in colonial America. Between 1683 and 1776, roughly 120,000 German-speaking immigrants arrived in the colonies. Most came from the southwestern states of the Holy Roman Empire, particularly the Palatinate, Baden, and Württemberg on the middle and upper Rhine River.

The chief port of entry for German immigrants was Philadelphia, and from here they spread into the countryside in search of land. Many of the early arrivals settled in southeastern Pennsylvania near Philadelphia, but others pressed further west beyond the Susquehanna River and south into Maryland. Over time, German-speaking colonists found their way into the Great Valley of the Appalachians and, by the 1730s, across the Potomac River into the northern Valley of Virginia. In the decades that followed German settlers and their American-born descendents continued moving south and west, leaving a distinctive mark on American culture wherever they settled."

Continue reading HERE

On October 5 the German Farm will be hosting Oktoberfest. If you are nearby you should go! Sounds fun! More info HERE!

Inside The 1700's Irish Farmhouse

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Friday Fences

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Braden and Dalton breaking flax. You can read about turning flax into linen, step by step RIGHT HERE

Looking in my photos I realized I didn't get many from the inside of the Irish home. It was very small. Just the 2 rooms. They were poor. Notice the dirt floor. Our host in the first photo explains how difficult life was for them. They were not land owners and the landlord keeps raising the rent on the property they lease. That is why they came to America.

I showed you around the outside HERE

"The migration of Irish Protestants from Ulster, Ireland’s northernmost province, to the American colonies began by 1718. By the American Revolution, more than 100,000 Ulster immigrants had arrived in America, representing the single largest movement from the British Isles to British North America in the 1700s. In America these people and their descendants came to be known as the, “Scotch-Irish,” to recall their Scottish and Irish origins, and distinguish them for the Catholic Irish who arrived in the United States in the mid-1800s.
Most Ulster immigrants came to the colony of Pennsylvania. Competing with the Germans for land in southeastern Pennsylvania, many Irish families made their way through the Great Valley of the Appalachians to settle in western Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the piedmont of North Carolina. By the end of the 1700s, theirs was the dominant English-speaking culture in the colonial American backcountry."

Read more HERE

Now for some Random Five Friday Fun!

1) I woke up about 45 minutes before my alarm this morning. I layed there trying to go back to sleep but couldn't. I hate that.

2) Last Friday night we watched The Great Gatsby. I loved it. I've never seen the original.

3) Tonight is Rec Night at the high school football game. All the Botetourt rec football teams get into the game free when they wear their jerseys. Then during half time their teams get announced and they get to run out on the field. It's always a fun thing for them to be honored that way.

4) Today after school is the first 6th grade dance. Braden and Dalton are pretty excited.

5) We are in for a rainy weekend. I need to get a new windshield wiper, TODAY!

Have a great weekend!

Inside The 1620 English Farmhouse

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Ok, I'm going to break the rules and post a few of the inside of this gorgeous old place. I showed you the outside HERE

In this photo we are getting a lesson of how life was on the farm.

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I am in love with these windows!

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Here we can see how they numbered the house when they dismantled it in England, to reconstruct here in Staunton, VA! And that allows me to link with Signs, Signs right? ;)

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Watch your step!

"English colonization of North America began with the founding of Jamestown in 1607. Over the next century other English colonies were established along the Atlantic coast of what would become the United States. By 1700, almost 250,000 people, most of whom were born in England or were of English descent, lived in the colonies.

Virginia was England’s first North American colony, and as many as 120,000 English migrants arrived here in the 1600s. Some colonists were granted land where they established tobacco plantations worked by white indentured servants and African slaves. Settlement slowly crept westward into the piedmont, and by the mid-1700s Anglo-Virginians crossed the Blue Ridge and began to settle in the Valley of Virginia."

Read more HERE

Rurality Wednesday - Early American Schoolhouse

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Frontier Culture Museum

"The founders of the United States were enlightened people who generally believed that it was important that citizens of the new nation be educated. This belief did not, however, become a matter of law and policy in most states until nearly a century after independence. Still, quite a few, if not most, Americans who lived during the course of that century managed to get enough schooling to conduct the necessary business of daily life. They could read the Bible, the local newspaper, and some legal documents; they could write, spell their names, sign documents, and perhaps compose letters or notes; and their math skills were adequate to conduct their personal business and, perhaps, keep account books. These Americans were not the nation’s educated elite, but they did operate its households, its farms, its mills, its stores, and its local government. They were as important to the nation’s success as college graduates and their education was earned at home from their parents, and very often from teachers in rural, one-room community schoolhouses."

Read more HERE

Rurality Wednesday

Barn Charm Tuesday - German Barn

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Frontier Culture Museum

Barn Charm

Tuesday Muse

1700's West Africa

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I have to back track here. This was the first exhibit and I somehow forgot to show you! After this, I have one more building to show you then we'll go inside :)


"During the 1600s and 1700s, nearly 250,000 Africans were brought to colonial America to serve as enslaved agricultural workers, domestic servants, and artisans. Although captives were taken from a vast area of the African continent, and from many different ethnic groups, the great majority were members of West African cultures that lived in the hinterlands of the Atlantic coast. Africans lived in all of Great Britain’s North American colonies, though their population was highest in South Carolina and Virginia." Read more HERE

Friday Fences & Random 5's - 1850's American Farm

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This is the Riddlebarger farm. It was moved from Eagle Rock, Botetourt County to the museum.

You can read about life on the farm HERE.

The other day a friend of mine was telling me that her husband farms the land that the Riddlebarger farm once was. His grandmother was friends with Mrs. Riddlebarger who once lived in this home. Upon further investigation on some history of this home (you know me, ha!), I found THIS ARTICLE and found it interesting that one of the names listed was the family name of my friend's husband. It always surprises me what a small world it is over here in my area!

My husband works with a Riddlebarger and he was telling our interpreter that and was wondering outloud if they were related and she said "Probably, there are a passel of them in the area"! She was an elderly woman, acting out the role of the lady of the house. Loved her!

Friday Fences

Random 5's

1) I'm not liking how dark it is when I get up in the mornings now. Not excited either for the time change. I love daylight savings.

2) Last night on my way to Kroger to pick Christian up from work, Ashlyn called me and asked if I could pick up some patches for her work pants. Ozzy had jumped up on her and ripped the leg. I bought patches and a few other things and got home with no patches. Christian and I jumped back in the car and headed back for Kroger. I parked along the curb as he went in. A woman then comes across the parking lot carrying a small pet carrier. I'm wondering what she was doing. She plopped the carrier into a shopping cart and opened the door and pulled out a cat. Put the carrier on the bottom part of the cart and let the cat sit in the upper part of the cart. Then she heads for the doors. But she passed the doors and kept walking and petting and singing to the cat. Then next thing I know, she climbs up on a display of charcoal bags and sits the cat so it can look into the store. She's laying upon the top of charcoal, holding her cat to the store window. At that time, Christian came out so we left. I believe she truly was the "Crazy Cat Lady"! I did feel a bit sorry for her though.

3) Went to edit a picture last night using picassa. I clicked on the photo editor, which usually takes you to Google's Picnik. Not anymore. Says they no longer use the editor but says that you can now edit in Google+ with their "powerful editing tools"....clicked the link to take me there and didn't see anywhere to edit. And wasn't it just last year that they bought Picnik and ticked us all off? I'm tired of the ever changing Google. Even their searches are just paid for now instead of relevant. But....I still "Google" everything lol

4) Football tomorrow. The boys played Salem on Tuesday. Salem is known for their sports teams. We tied, 32-32! It was a great game. Braden had an excellent night catching pass after pass, even scored a TD once. Dalton just didn't seem to be anywhere near the action so I hope he has a better game tomorrow!

5) Tomorrow is also Olde Salem Days. Will be heading there after football. It is also our Anniversary. 28 years! I've shown you a wedding pic before RIGHT HERE. Later tomorrow, Braden and Dalton have a birthday party to go to. A local TAP HOUSE just opened so we'll be able to drop the boys off at the party and head around the corner and have a drink and dinner and try the place out!

Have a great weekend!!

Signs, Signs - 1820's American Farm

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"By the 1820s, the diverse peoples who settled the Valley of Virginia had lived together for several generations. Shaped by the common experiences of the American Revolution, the founding of the United States, and the market revolution, ethnic differences began to fade. Cultural persistence remained strongest among the Virginia Germans. Many Virginia Germans maintained their language and unique customs throughout the 1800s, but after 1820 they began moving toward the mainstream of American life." Read more HERE

A German man built this house in 1820, about 50 miles from where it now sits.

Linking with Signs, Signs

(I'll show inside the houses eventually. City Daily Photo rules are one photo a day which sometimes I break the rule with using 2, like today, but I hate to over-do it!)