Blackberry Winter/Local Strawberries Ready

According to the local farmers, we just had blackberry winter. Blackberries are in full bloom and the temps were 38 degrees the night before last.

How is it that it always happens that way? I think I'll keep track of it for a few years.

If you're looking for local produce, the strawberries at Marcum Farms just up College Hill Road from Waco are ready to pick. $9 a gallon for u-pick, $11 a gallon if they pick. I haven't stopped yet, but last year they were terrific. Melissa made jam and we enjoyed it up until January, so we need to make more this year.

KCA Spring 2008

The Spring Kentucky Council on Archives meeting was held at Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY. It was a long, rainy drive but beautiful.

There were three speakers for this meeting:

• Caroline Rubens of Appalshop: To Fit Our Own Category: Preservation of 35 Years of Appalshop Audio Recordings
• Robert Gipe of Southeast Community and Technical College: Higher Ground: The Role of Self-documentation in the Preservation of Community Identity
• Dwight Swanson formerly of Appalshop: Film Preservation at Appalshop: Funding and Process

Caroline's talk centered around the processes related to preserving some of Appalshop's earliest recordings. Most of their work was made possible through grants and they reformatted audio materials three different ways:

1. Inhouse
2. With a small production company
3. Using a large company with conservation abilities

They decided to work with the finished products rather than the raw sound files as the finished audio that had been sold was the closest to the artist's original vision for the music.

Caroline gave pros and cons for each experience, but the end result was that they would use the professional conservator for audio that they planned on selling. Other audio would be done inhouse with their equipment and Adobe Audition for digitization.

Some other interesting items were that they used a food dehydrator for baking tapes with sticky tape syndrome. They were using LTO Data tapes for long term offsite storage rather than a server or external hard drive.

Robert Gipe is the head of Appalachian Studies at Southeast Community College and talked about his project in using art to document the community. They focused on photography, community theater and tile mosaic murals. The photography combined photographs with oral history which was then turned into several tile mosaics and a play. The "If These Hills Could Talk" mosaic is awesome. The tiles making up the hills are stamped with letters and make up quotes from the oral history project.

Last was Dwight Swanson talking about film preservation projects at Appalshop. All their projects were funded through grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation(NFPF). The earliest grants were to have older films preserved and put on new 16mm film. Later grants have included digitization of films as well. The NFPF site gives a list of labs that can do the preservation work as well as grant information.

The cost estimate to preserve and make a copy of 1000 feet of 16mm film (about 28 minutes) is nearly $4,000 and the cost to digitize the preserved film is nearly $1,000. This cost is for a professional film conservation lab to do the work.

Good presenters and good information. Also we got the chance to talk to other colleagues about our Flickr project. There was a lot of interest from other institutions in using Flickr for their photos as well.

Springtime

There has been so much going on at the farm right now, that I can't seem to keep up with it all. After living in the house for over a year I'm finally trying to get some landscaping done, so every evening I'm planting something or moving dirt.

I started pouring a concrete pathway to the house last summer, but it seemed to take so long and it got complicated when I decided to do a curvy path rather than straight. A few weeks ago I noticed a lot of slate laying on top of the ground where they had recently put in a water line close to home. So every evening I've stopped and picked up slate. One more night will give me enough to do most of the path and it will be much faster than mixing about 30 bags of concrete.

My youngest just turned 13, so it's official, a household full of female teenagers and one menopausal mom. It gets interesting. Somehow she managed to get a four-legged birthday present. That 'S' tattooed on my forehead must be getting bigger.

Once again the peach tree is loaded with tiny peaches, but since they never get very big, I'm trying the advice in one of my gardening books and I'm thinning them. Maybe this year we'll have good peaches and the Japanese beetles won't get them all.

Ashley just started a blog for things that are happening on the farm which finally has a name, Cedar Pond Farm.

Locust Winter

Well, the locust trees are in full bloom, so I guess this cold spell is officially 'Locust Winter' according to the old timers at the local store. I even had to turn on the heat again last night.

Friends

Good friends plus a street dance with live music plus a moonlight walk in the woods plus a glass of wine near a gurgling creek equals one of the best evenings I've had in a long time.

A Slideshow From EKUArchives @ Flickr

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

These photos are from the 1950s set.