Heritage Homestead (Whitney, TX)

For my birthday this year, Dan took me to Cafe Homestead located on Heritage Homestead's 510 acres  near Waco.  The cafe offers fresh organic limited menu.  My falafel pita with sweet potato fries was delicious especially the sweet potatoes.  So much flavor that I barely used my ketchup.  The best part was the quiet atmosphere.  No loud talking customers or music to talk over.  After lunch, we walked around the grounds visiting the different craft buildings.

Cafe Homestead

Heritage Homestead is a religious community living a simplistic lifestyle using basic hand tools to work and live off the land.  No machinery is used.  The farmland is plowed by horses.  Sheep are hand sheared.  Wool is hand carded.  Everything is handmade...metal work, woodwork...

Wood shop ~ love the door!

...weaving, spinning, sewing, pottery, soap, and so much more.  Oh, and the quilts!  Wow!  Such beautiful workmanship.  Two of the quilts were made by a 15 year old.  Points were right on with small even hand-stitched quilting.  I can hear my quilt hoop calling to me.  I need to blow the dust off of it and start hand quilting again.  

You can see some of their fine craft products on this link.  They even have classes for anyone interested in learning the traditional ways.  I would love to take a pottery class or a spinning class and a weaving class.  They also hold a fair twice a year to show visitors how they till the earth and make their crafts.

pottery wheel

Did I mention that they also do community barn raising?   They also save old barns by restoring them to their original beauty.  We talked to one woman about how the building we were standing in used to be in New Jersey.  Below is a restored barn appropriately called The Barn filled with all kinds of wonderful handmade items.  You can see some of their fine crafts here.   You can see little bit of the inside of the barn if you go to Gift Barn and click on more photos.  Oh, and check out the quilt hanging from the second floor.  That was just one of many handmade quilts.  

Here's a close-up of the barn doors, but it doesn't look like they open them any more.  We went through the small door to the left.

Old barn doors

I would love to have this one for a home with the water wheel.  This is the Grist Mill.  The pancake and muffin mixes were very temping to buy.

Restored old barn - Grist Mill

The other side of the grist mill

The people are not Amish or Mennonites, but they do dress simple.  Women in mid-length calf dresses/skirts.  Their hair is worn in a bun.  Men wear buttoned shirts.  No t-shirts.  I noticed that the young people look healthy and not a single one had a skin problem that I often see on most teens.  Not a single older person shuffled or labored to get across the room.  Something we see all too often when we are grocery shopping.  

pathway between buildings

I'm sure their lifestyle is a lot of hard labor, but at the same time, this lifestyle has a better quality of health than most modern lifestyles.  They do have computers as you can tell from their websites, and of course, all utilities.  They believe in strong family values, so I'm sure there is no computer games at night for kids or TV for that matter.  They also have their own school.  All the children live and learn on within the community.  It must be quite a culture shock for a child to leave home and see our busy techno, not to mention, noisy world.

On The Cutting Board
My shop is open for business and I already sold four mug rugs.  Two were the red and aqua Happy Campers, so I am already starting some more in the same popular colors.  I finished and listed the Bunnies in The Garden quilt last night.

And I finished the morning glories on the ladder. 

 I'm hoping this will be popular too because I really enjoy making this SW design.

I am finally caught up with my blog, so back to sewing!

Happy Quilting!

How High Is The Water, Momma? (Hot Springs, SD)

I barely got setup to sew a border onto this bunny quilt when the park's flood siren went off.  We thought that was a little strange since the sky had cleared up after a heavy rain/hail storm and the grounds was starting to dry out.  Campers were busy building fires and getting meals ready.  It was turning into a nice evening.

Dan called the ranger and soon the ranger was calling back to say that they would be evacuating low lying campsites!  Wow, really??  Apparently the rain had caused a flash flood from a connecting canyon and it was on its way to our area.  While Dan spread the news to start packing, I went out back to look at the stream behind our motorhome.

campers packing in a hurry

Well, the small stream was now a fast moving little river.  I never see the water from our site, but I could see it quite clearly at that moment!  The head ranger had all the campers and day use people out within a couple hours.  Some of the road was already covered in 6 inches of water and still rising.

fire pit is still smoking from the campers

We did not have to worry about moving since our site sits up high enough, but we did pack up our outside items just in case of more heavy rains.

20 ft below and behind our site

Gosh, this is the first time the campground has been so quiet!  We wandered around picking up some trash that was left behind and watched the water level.  Then I got that song by Johnny Cash stuck on repeat in my head - "How high is the water, Momma? Well, it's 5 feet high and risin'!"  Well, we did not have to worry about the water rising too much.  The photo below shows the highest point.  Not too bad for us or for the park.

road to wildlife area

They opened up the road gates this morning.  The day use area is back in business, but the campground only has one camper so it will be another quiet evening for us.  You know what?....I think I'll get that border done tonight.

Happy Quilting!