Feeling Inspired

Yesterday, after church, we headed to The Spoonbread Festival in the nearby town of Berea.

We enjoy going to these festivals, checking out what the vendors have to offer, buying a thing or two to help support the local artists, farmers and economy, and sometimes, eating something we shouldn’t be eating.  At least not eating too often, ha!  But, yesterday, we were good.  We bought some Kettle corn cuz the sample was just too good to pass up and I bought a Mango Bubble Tea which this particular ‘tea’ was more like a smoothie with balls of mango juice that burst when you bit them.  That was the first time I’ve had Bubble Tea – quite yummy and refreshing!

We had no idea what Spoonbread was.  Yet another ‘Kentucky thang’ that we were unfamiliar with just like morel mushrooms, beer cheese and Ale 8 One.  We are slowly discovering the local happenings and culture by attending these festivals.

We ended up not trying the Spoonbread ($3.00 for a small bowl) but it’s basically corn meal, milk and eggs with more of a savory pudding consistency.  Maybe someday we’ll try it.

We did manage to find some ‘somewhat local’ honey from Lancaster which is closer than the Lexington honey we got at the Morel Mushroom festival back in March.  Their honey is seasonal honey.  We sampled and purchased the Wildflower Honey which is their Fall honey and is honey made from the pollen of goldenrod, ragweed and whatever else is pollinating this time of year.  Yea!  Maybe next year the ragweed won’t stir up my allergies quite so much.

Since we decided not to eat at the festival we enjoyed a delicious lunch at Cracker Barrel.  You just can’t go wrong there!

On the way home, we decided to stop by Tater Knob Pottery & Farm, a local tourist attraction just down the road from us.  We weren’t sure if they would be open on Sunday but we thought we could, at least, find out what their hours were.  Although they weren’t officially open, there were a couple of people in the shop working on some pottery and they kindly told us to come on in and have a look around.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me but what an inspiring shop!  Lots and lots of beautiful and functional pottery from dishes and coffee mugs to hurricane lamps to decorative pumpkins.  I ended up buying a beautiful honey pot to put my delicious local honey in!

After seeing all the handmade crafts at the festival and the gorgeous pottery at Tater Knob Pottery and the beautiful Fall weather we are having I am feeling inspired.  Inspired to create, to make things, to find my ‘niche’ in this very creative and artistic community.

So, until I have the time to create and make or find my ‘niche’ I walked around the farm and took some photos to share with you.

This is a female hummingbird…

We still have quite a few hummingbirds hanging around so I cleaned the feeder, filled it and hung it back out.

The okra plants are taller than we are now.  We call them okra ‘trees’ since they are so tall and their base is several inches in diameter.

The blooms are so pretty even before they open!  They are still blooming and still putting out okra.

I have stopped pickling them since we have so many jars  We are giving them to a fellow at church and hope to barter with him for some fire wood he wants to give us.  He wants to pay us for all the okra and just give us the wood. I think bartering (or trading) would be a win-win for all of us since he loves our okra and it’s food on his table and we could really use the wood he wants to give us to keep warm this winter.

I wish bartering would come back.  It’s done around here for many things and we really like that.

But, back to being inspired… I have many ideas floating around my head and I enjoy several various hobbies so we’ll just see where it all takes me.

For now, there’s lots of canning to do so making and creating will have to wait a bit.

Till next time friends!