Harvest Moon Festival

Today we spent a few hours at The Kearsarge Indian Museum . This was on the calendar in my continuing quest to make sure the younger boys get to experience all the living history in our general region now that they are an age to appreciate it all. I have loads of photos of Trevor and Hayley at historical places all over New England and there in the background are toddler Colin and Tristan napping in a double stroller! I felt a real leading to make sure to do fun things like this again now that the "little boys" are big. The big kids will get even more out of them now too. Hayley chose to come along this time but Trevor opted out. There was a Harvest Moon festival going on t the Indian Museum today with craft and skill demonstrations, drumming, Native American food and more. We were not allowed to take photos in the museum itself (boy that was hard!) but I got plenty on the grounds or at the outside exhibits. In the museum itself a teenage volunteer seemed to take notice of the boys and gave them a good running commentary of quite a few exhibits, he also pointed out things outdoors that boys would enjoy. It was like having our own personal tour guide, very cool! The many hand made items were beautiful and the stories of Native Americans in our area interesting.

After the museum we saw some native crafters demonstrating thing like soapstone carving, quilling and bead work. There were some artifacts and craft items on display and for sale. The boys LOVED the weapons! After seeing the crafters we headed outdoors to try some survival skills and to see the tee pee. It started to rain after awhile and we decided it was time to get some lunch, Native American foods were on sale for reasonable prices and the menu even listed vegan options. We chose vegan 3 Sisters soup and a choice or corn bread or Zuni bread. we made sure to choose some of each bread so people could share back and forth and try each. We had our lunch in a barn while listening to some Native American drumming. It was a fun day.

Photo highlights

The boys spent a long time looking at the weapons!

Tristan had good questions for all the craftspeople

This simple weapon was used back in Medieval times although they didn't fling crab apples! the kids made a rendition of this when we got home.

Basically you swing it around once and then on the second turn let go of one of the strings. Tristan was very good at this, his apples went the farthest.

This next weapon is arrow darts, all the kids tried it but only Colin could seem to get his arrow to go far.

Lunch was 3 Sisters soup which was nice and warm after being outdoors in the rain. It tasted good but a little spicier than most of us was used to.

Too many people were watching to get a good photo but this was the drumming group who played in the barn. They explained quite a bit about native American drumming and chanting and how the songs are chosen and what might happen if you sing someones "family song" without permission. They may ask you to stop, turn the drum over or in rare cases even slice right through the top of the drum!

I'm glad we decided to attend this event despite the on and off rain. The children had fun and we all learned quite a bit.