Harvest time at Monticello

This past weekend I traveled to Charlottesville VA (a frequent destination anyway) to participate in Monticello's Heritage Harvest Festival with the printed textiles I have been producing.  As I have written in the past, Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden at Monticello has been a major source of inspiration for me for 20 years now, and I jumped at the chance to spend a September Saturday displaying my wares at the very edge of this beautiful spot.

There were specialty food vendors, demonstrations, seed sellers (the Festival was founded by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and, I believe, Monticello's Center for Historic Plants), seminars on topics as diverse as raising chickens in your backyard to fermentation and vinegar workshops.  And there were historic craftspeople -- I saw a guy in a fab coonskin cap displaying (sigh) pelts and taxidermied animals (an important pioneer skill, I suppose).  Music.  Goat kebabs.  Cheese.  Microbrewed beers.  It was loads of fun!  People by the boatload shopping who appreciated my wares and purchased them, thus keeping me in business (I always deeply appreciate that).  All done with the selfless and energetic help of my sisters Sandy and Carol.

If you look carefully at the above photo you can see Jefferson's vegetable garden behind my tent.  All of the quotes and vegetables have been inspired by my work about this garden from 1992-93, the series entitled  The Thousand Foot Garden.  See my art blog, http://laurafosternicholson.blogspot.com/2011/03/planting-cycles.html, for more about that work.