Feels Like A Feast Day

I have been waiting for this for WEEKS!   I woke up this morning and finally, finally!  It feels like a Feast Day.  That won’t mean a whole lot to you unless you know what the Feast is.   I will tell you about the Feast and at the end of this blog I will add a link to a site where you can learn more about it.  It’s called the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon.

The Feast is a two day festival held in West Lafayette, Indiana.  It is probably the biggest thing around here.  It is a recreation of life at a fort in the 1700s.  It is staged after all the crops would have been in and people all go to the fort where a trading post is set up for people to buy and barter things they need.  There are 8000 participants and probably around 75,000 visitors.  I get to go back in time for those two days and live and act and eat like they did back in the 1700s.   This will be my 11th year.  Everybody who is a "participant" is expected to adhere to the era, clothing, food, etc… 

My group is called Hospitality.  Our major function is to supply the people who demonstrate natural crafts with refreshments twice a day.  So, in pairs we go around and take a basket of cookies and a jug of coffee and a jug of lemonade to those who demonstrate crafts.   The rest of the day we are just people who are there to trade and barter, to eat the wonderful food and to see people we haven’t seen for a year.  And we DO see the same people every year!  And how they have changed (as have we).  My daughter was 13 when we started.  Now she is 24 and she still loves doing this every year.  We seem to become more enmeshed in it every year. 

The first year we were told to have a story about why we were there.  This was our story:

I was Elizabeth (true), a widow(not true) and she was my daughter, Emilie (also true).  Because there were no eligible young men in our area we went to the Feast to find her a husband (13 year-olds were commonly married back then). We almost did it that first year!  We were watching a skit going on in one of the arenas where a young man was "out walking" with a young lady and found out she was already spoken for.  So he went around the arena and picked a new young lady to walk out with.  He picked my daughter.  That was one of the few times I have actually seen her blush. 

The Feast changes in subtle ways from year to year.  The first year I worked there I was actually bald (I had cancer and was going through chemo).  No one knew!  As an adult woman I had to keep my head covered.  There were people who got married and had children in that year….so many changes…I wonder what changes this years’ Feast will bring. 

It feels like a Feast day today!

Click on this link:   http://www.tcha.mus.in.us/feast.htm