A Bee Class Museum New Fridge RAINY Kind of Day

Today had an interesting start. Jasper and I were up at 6:00, getting ready and eating breakfast before leaving for his bee keeping class. The only problem (and it was a big problem) was that we didn’t know where the class was. Last week, I had emailed the man who teaches it and asked for directions, but since the class was canceled he never sent the directions. Yesterday, I asked again, but I had still not received an answer by 7:00 this morning, and I knew we had to just leave, in faith believing that either the man would text or email me, or that I’d be able to get him on the phone at some point.

When we were about halfway to the town that I knew the man lived near, I pulled over and called him. He gave me directions and I followed them through a very rural area and we ended up at the right place at the right time. The class was in a shed, so I walked up with Jasper and got him situated. I had intended on sitting there with him, but the shed appeared to be full of adult students, so I slunk back to the car and rested for a while. It was raining steadily and had been all morning. When I saw action around the shed, I got out to see what was going on, only to find that I really should have stayed. Oh well.

The exciting part was that everyone was getting at least some of their bee equipment. Jasper got a super with 10 frames and now we need to paint the outside. He also got gloves, a smoker, and a hive tool. At the next class he will get bees! Yikes! We have a lot to do and get ready for before then.

While he was in the class. I was checking Facebook on my phone (as one does) and I saw that our blacksmith friend would be demonstrating at a museum today. This is the smith whom we normally see every spring weekend at the faire, but of course there is no faire this year. The museum in question is one that I’ve known about and wanted to go to for years, and we were more than halfway there.

When the bee class ended before lunch, I decided that Jasper and I would have a lunch and museum date. We had a nice lunch and then drove to the museum in the steady downpour. From the road, the museum doesn’t look like much–two or three buildings maybe, and they seem to be themed on farm machinery. Well, it turned out there were quite a few buildings.

We made a beeline for the blacksmith shed and stood with our umbrella’s in the pouring rain watching Shadowhawk and his female apprentices work the forges.

Then we wandered around from building to building. Because of my arthritis, we didn’t get to all of them, but we did see a barn full of horse paraphernalia.

There was also a lovely little chapel with a bell you can ring for peace.

Inside the chapel was a relative of the autoharp, a “mandolin harp” from 1900.

We went through a couple more buildings before finally going to the “main” building that we were supposed to go through first. There were rooms full of laundry equipment, kitchen supplies and then . . . my heart skipped a beat. The next room was all musical instruments, mostly of the folk variety and many, many of them were antique zithers and autoharp precursors.

I wish I had been able to get closer to them! And afterwards I had a nice little chat with the docents about folk music and instruments. For a moment there they thought I was a famous autoharpist, but I soon set them straight. I think they must have heard of my teacher!

Anyway, it was a fascinating visit and I can’t wait to take the whole family back when the weather is nice. My only criticism of the museum is that there is very little labeling or explanation of what things are and how they are used. I have no idea if we guessed correctly on some of those things!

While all this was going on, Flynn and his two buddies were busy loading his U-Haul truck without our help. He ended up deciding not to leave for Colorado until tomorrow morning.

After supper Walter and I went refrigerator shopping after doing plenty of research online in the last week. The poor salesman found himself stuck with a couple who did not want anything fancy. No stainless steel, no “French doors,” not even an icemaker! We also didn’t want to pay for delivery, so Walter will be picking it up himself with our trailer on Monday. It will be nice to have our first new refrigerator. I really hope it lasts a long time.

Parting Shot:

 

One of the prettier instruments at the museum.