Farm Camp EUREKA!!!!

The 2013 session of Camp Eureka was our best yet! We visited 5 different Cornwall farms and explored the source of bread, butter and yogurt; honey and granola; fruit and honey peach jam; wool, fiber, and woven belts; healing herbs, soothing salves and scentsational sachets. After carving wooden spoons under the direction of Lost Arts officiando Joe Brien, our week culminated with an overnight in the Local Farm barn. Peruse our scrapbook to catch some of the wonder of a wonderful week...

Shave-Horse Making

Joe Brien and a lively bunch of 7 wranglers embarked on a wild ride to capture, train and ride a shave-horse.
Joe had a table with the shave-horse parts already cut out and ready for assembly. There were several work stations set up. We all needed do was plane edges, drill mortises, cut tenons, and assemble a jumbled assortment of wooden pieces into something resembling a four legged, very loose necked, slow moving but once its dumb-head gets ahold of something lets go only when asked, wooden creation. In short a shave-horse.

Milking Stool Making

Joe Brien took us in-hand, in using hand-tools to make a handy milking stool.

This is a draw shave used by pulling towards yourself and with the grain of the wood.

By clamping the pre-cut stool seat in a neat gizmo called a shave horse. It's a foot operated clamp.
Another way to hold your stool seat.
Smoothing the edges.
Using piece of wood, a nail and a pencil to figure out where to drill holes for the legs. A little decoration.
A hand operated drill press.

Tapering the ends of the legs.


Marking where wedges will go.

Making splits for the wedges to go into.

Putting glue on the wedge.Setting the wedge.

Sawing off the extra leg length.
Planing the top smooth.
How long do you want your legs?
All hard at work.


All done now!!

Spoon Carving and Campfire Cooking

Sixteen Successfully Seasoned Spoon Carvers

On August 23, Joe Brien of Lost Arts workshops demonstrated how to light a fire without matches. We used flint and steel to create a spark in charcloth, then friction of a bow drill to ignite a bit of wood. The tiny ember was carefully transferred to a tinder pack of very fine combustible materials and encouraged to burn with a light breath of air. Once we got a fire started we turned to our spoons.

Starting with pre-cut blanks of easy-to-carve basswood, we learned to keep a safe distance from our neighbors, to carve away from ourselves, and to work with the grain of the wood. Sometimes we levered against an angle of the spoon to round corners and edges.


We left the bowl of the spoon to be hollowed with a live ember from the fire. Holding the ember in place with a scrap of wood, we blew on the coal until the area we wished to remove was charred and brittle. Then we scraped away the burned wood with our wood scrap and/or sandpaper.


Wyatt Whiteman of 1760's Farm House prepared a vegetable stew in a cast iron dutch oven hung over the fire by a tripod The soup and spoons were finished in time for lunch.

For Wyatt's DVD on Hearth Cooking: 1760farmhouse
Visit lostartworkshops for info on Joe's workshops.
Joe's presentation was funded by individual donations and
a grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism

Making Milking Stools with Joe Brien

Planing the edges of the seat to make them round and smooth.

Drilling leg holes holes in the seat.

Shaving the leg-ends to fit the holes in the seat.

Driving them home.

Splitting the leg ends on the seat top.

Driving a wedge into the split leg end.

Sawing the legs off so they will rest evenly on the floor.

After sawing the wedged end off flush with the seat top, planing the top smooth one more time.

Our finished work! with thanks to individual donations and to our instuctor extraordinaire: Joe Brien of Lost Art Workshops!