July 10-13, 2014
@ HomeGrown HideAways near Berea, KY
Early Bird Tickets on sale now through April 30!
Substantial discount if you buy now
Prices go up on May 1
Substantial discount if you buy now
Prices go up on May 1
2014 Workshops
Home Canning & Advanced Home Canning * Consent * Radical Education * Kombucha * Wilderness First Aid * Movement Workshop * Cacao Ceremony * Hunting Edible Wild Mushrooms * Basic Bicycle Maintenance * Dumpstering * Ecological Design/Forest Gardening Walk * Scything * Straw Bale Construction * Make Your Own River Cane Flute * Cooking Without Tools * Cooking Over an Open Fire: Cast Iron and Dutch Ovens * Making Cheese * Group Decision-Making and Facilitation * How To Purify Water/Survival Techniques * How Not To Get Lost in the Woods * Homesteading and Living Without a Fridge * Permaculture in Action: Off Grid, Natural Building and No-Till Farming * Puppet Building * Herbal Remedies * Rain Gardens & Building a Monarch Butterfly Waystation * Field Trip: Off the Grid and Solar-Powered Home Construction * Flint Knapping * Atl Atl and Spear * Walk: Roots and Non-Timber Forest Products * Indian Curry Cooking * Non-Toxic Cleaning * Reclaiming Your Grandma's Fats: Healing With Lard, Tallow and More * Healing Illness Through the Gut with Food and Herbs * Songwriting Circle * Basic Knot Tying * Breadmaking on an Open Fire * Nature Walk for Kids and Families * Shaker Singing * Hammock Camping * Astronomy and Star Gazing * Recycling Humanure * Soap Making From Goats Milk * Confronting the Fast Food Industry * Hackeysack * Confronting Privilege * The Root of All Resistance * Animal Rights and Speciesism * Mattock and Shovel Use Without Back Strain * Stick Tag * Living Gluten Free * Mountaintop Removal and the Citizen Opposition Movement * Living in a School Bus * Rocket Stoves * Make Your Own Toothpaste and Shampoo * Making Mead * Earthships * Quitting Facebook * Earth Evolution and Gaia Theory * Storytelling: Bioregional Folk Tales * Solar Powered Clothes Dryer * Making Protest Signs * Fermenting Kim Che and Sauerkraut * Simple Living: Getting Your Needs Met * Joule Thief * Tiny Houses * Foraging For Beauty * Thru-Hiking the Appalachian Trail * Wildflower Walk * DIY Happiness * Massage Therapy for Dogs and Cats * Thai Massage * The Power of Birth: Doulas, Intactivism, Babywearing, and more * Conscious Parenting * Making Art from Japanese Bush Honeysuckle *
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2014 Music and Entertainment
Big Maracas - Lexington's Favorite
I am excited to announce that we have booked a wonderful Nashville Singer-Songwriter duo Jeni and Billy, and I think you are going to love them.
I first heard Jeni & Billy perform at Appalshop's Seedtime on the Cumberland Festival in Whitesburg, and I bought their CD "Jewell Ridge Coal." I bet I've listened to it 100 times. Check em out at Merlefest performing their hit "Tazewell Beauty Queen" |
News for the 2014 Festival!
This year we we will have an extended open mike session on Thursday night to allow all the musicians at the festival some time on the stage. We will also have - an Appalachian tradition - a Pie Auction! Remember the scene in the film "Coal Miner's Daughter" where Doolittle first woos Loretta Lynn by buying her pie at the Van Lear dance - well, we are going to have one of those. Contact me if you would like to bring a pie for the pie auction!
For more general information about the festival, please go to the Festival Info page.
Friday night features Lexington faves Big Maracas and a wonderful singer songwriter Maggie Lander plus the return of Eric George, from Vermont, who played at last year's fest.
And folk singers Jeni and Billy from Nashville!
Saturday night will be a contra dance with Berea caller Joe Wilkie.
We will also have a Cake Walk! To raise money for a good cause.
Monday (following the festival's conclusion) there will be a Mountain Justice meeting. Mountain Justice is a regional direct-action environmental and citizen's group that has been working to end mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia since 2004. All interested festival attendees are welcome and encouraged to attend this meeting. www.mountainjustice.org
Food: There will be some changes in how meals are offered at the Whippoorwill Festival in 2014. We will offer a community dinner for everyone on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and a simple breakfast (homemade granola, fresh fruit and coffee) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings. Lunch will be on your own - so plan on bringing a lunch and a cooler, plus snacks. We will have bags of ice available. We have an awesome food truck from Lexington coming this year - Rolling Oven - that serves wood-fired pizza and sandwiches. Check em out here!
If you have comments or thoughts on this food plan for 2014, or if you want to be a food vendor, please contact me using the contact page.
Thanks! And we are looking forward to another great festival in 2014. Don't forget there is a substantial discount for buying your tickets in advance. Registration is now live!
This year we we will have an extended open mike session on Thursday night to allow all the musicians at the festival some time on the stage. We will also have - an Appalachian tradition - a Pie Auction! Remember the scene in the film "Coal Miner's Daughter" where Doolittle first woos Loretta Lynn by buying her pie at the Van Lear dance - well, we are going to have one of those. Contact me if you would like to bring a pie for the pie auction!
For more general information about the festival, please go to the Festival Info page.
Friday night features Lexington faves Big Maracas and a wonderful singer songwriter Maggie Lander plus the return of Eric George, from Vermont, who played at last year's fest.
And folk singers Jeni and Billy from Nashville!
Saturday night will be a contra dance with Berea caller Joe Wilkie.
We will also have a Cake Walk! To raise money for a good cause.
Monday (following the festival's conclusion) there will be a Mountain Justice meeting. Mountain Justice is a regional direct-action environmental and citizen's group that has been working to end mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia since 2004. All interested festival attendees are welcome and encouraged to attend this meeting. www.mountainjustice.org
Food: There will be some changes in how meals are offered at the Whippoorwill Festival in 2014. We will offer a community dinner for everyone on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and a simple breakfast (homemade granola, fresh fruit and coffee) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings. Lunch will be on your own - so plan on bringing a lunch and a cooler, plus snacks. We will have bags of ice available. We have an awesome food truck from Lexington coming this year - Rolling Oven - that serves wood-fired pizza and sandwiches. Check em out here!
If you have comments or thoughts on this food plan for 2014, or if you want to be a food vendor, please contact me using the contact page.
Thanks! And we are looking forward to another great festival in 2014. Don't forget there is a substantial discount for buying your tickets in advance. Registration is now live!
Photo by Tom Eblen, Lexington Herald-Leader www.kentucky.com
Lexington Herald Leader - July 17, 2013
"Whippoorwill Festival Taught about 300
Skills for Earth-Friendly Living"
by Tom Eblen
BEREA — How do you describe the Whippoorwill Festival? It is part Scout camp, part folkways festival and part family reunion, straight out of the pages of the old Whole Earth Catalog.
However it's described, the third annual event attracted more than 300 people from across the region to rural Madison County last weekend. They came for 3½ days of camping, communal eating, conversation, education, music, dancing and fun in a family-friendly atmosphere.
"It attracts an eclectic, interesting group of people," said organizer Dave Cooper of Lexington, an environmental activist and a former mechanical engineer. "You put them all together, and interesting things happen."
The Whippoorwill Festival (Whippoorwillfest.com) is held at HomeGrown HideAways (Homegrownhideaways.org), a 100-acre farm and eco-friendly campground west of Berea that is tucked away below tree-covered hills.
The festival is one of three that owners Nathan and Jessa Turner host each year. HomeGrown HideAway also has the PlayThink Movement & Flow Arts Festival (Playthinkfest.com) in June and the Holler in the Holler music and arts festival, Aug. 9-11.
Most people came to the Whippoorwill Festival to learn "skills for earth-friendly living," Cooper said. There were more than 75 classes and demonstrations.
Many classes harked back to Appalachia's pre-industrial lifestyle and heritage: cooking and bread-making over an open fire, making soap from goats' milk, beekeeping, composting, starting a fire without matches, making paper, banjo playing and ballad singing.
Johnny Faulkner, a retired archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service at Red River Gorge, was teaching and demonstrating skills that Kentuckians were using long before the first white pioneers and settlers arrived.
He used a small billet made from a deer antler to chip or "knap" flint to make arrow and spear points for hunting. After he finished one, he showed me how they were attached to a spear made of native river cane and hurled at high speed with the help of a short stick called an "atlatl."
"With that, they could throw a spear at 100 miles an hour," he said. "I sure wouldn't want to be hit by one."
Norm Adkins of Richmond demonstrated a similar technique, but with materials beyond the traditional flint that Native Americans used. He had one bright green arrowhead he made from fiber optic plastic.
Other classes focused on food: oyster mushroom inoculation, hunting wild mushrooms, growing herbs and strawberries, making sauerkraut, growing nut trees, starting a community garden, composting, saving seeds and raising backyard chickens.
And still others were about skills for low-cost and back-to-nature living: basic bicycle and auto repair, wildflowers, spinning wool, knitting, making sandals and shoes, natural childbirth, stargazing through a telescope, hitchhiking and wilderness first aid.
"We live in Berea, and this is one of our favorite things to do every year," said Chris Smith, an emergency room nurse who taught the wilderness first aid class and came for the weekend with his wife, Katie Gardner, and their two sons.
They were staffing a first aid station among the tents of several social activists groups, including Appalachian Water Watch, Kentucky Heartwood, the Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition and Kentucky Mountain Justice.
"People see a lot of old friends here," Smith said. "It gives them a break from protesting what they don't like and learning more about what they do like."
There was a contra dance Thursday night, and traditional music concerts Friday and Saturday evenings. Pam Gadd of Nashville came to perform with the New Coon Creek Girls string band and teach workshops on banjo playing and songwriting. She also wanted to take the composting workshop.
Wendy Welch of the Tale of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore in Big Stone Gap, Va., led a "running a successful small business in Appalachia" workshop, a skill Cooper wants to emphasize more at future festivals.
"Many workshop leaders come to the festival and talk about whatever their passion is, and often they are making a little business out of it," said Cooper, who is trying to start a new organization, the Appalachian Small and Micro Business Alliance.
"It would be kind of a chamber of commerce to help nurture and grow these small startup businesses in the region," Cooper said. "As we look toward the end of coal, we're going to need lots of ways to create new economic models in Appalachia."
Tom Eblen: (859) 231-1415. Email: teblen@herald-leader.com. Twitter: @tomeblen. Blog: Tomeblen.bloginky.com.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/07/16/2716526/tom-eblen-whippoorwill-festival.html#disqus_thread#storylink=cpy
However it's described, the third annual event attracted more than 300 people from across the region to rural Madison County last weekend. They came for 3½ days of camping, communal eating, conversation, education, music, dancing and fun in a family-friendly atmosphere.
"It attracts an eclectic, interesting group of people," said organizer Dave Cooper of Lexington, an environmental activist and a former mechanical engineer. "You put them all together, and interesting things happen."
The Whippoorwill Festival (Whippoorwillfest.com) is held at HomeGrown HideAways (Homegrownhideaways.org), a 100-acre farm and eco-friendly campground west of Berea that is tucked away below tree-covered hills.
The festival is one of three that owners Nathan and Jessa Turner host each year. HomeGrown HideAway also has the PlayThink Movement & Flow Arts Festival (Playthinkfest.com) in June and the Holler in the Holler music and arts festival, Aug. 9-11.
Most people came to the Whippoorwill Festival to learn "skills for earth-friendly living," Cooper said. There were more than 75 classes and demonstrations.
Many classes harked back to Appalachia's pre-industrial lifestyle and heritage: cooking and bread-making over an open fire, making soap from goats' milk, beekeeping, composting, starting a fire without matches, making paper, banjo playing and ballad singing.
Johnny Faulkner, a retired archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service at Red River Gorge, was teaching and demonstrating skills that Kentuckians were using long before the first white pioneers and settlers arrived.
He used a small billet made from a deer antler to chip or "knap" flint to make arrow and spear points for hunting. After he finished one, he showed me how they were attached to a spear made of native river cane and hurled at high speed with the help of a short stick called an "atlatl."
"With that, they could throw a spear at 100 miles an hour," he said. "I sure wouldn't want to be hit by one."
Norm Adkins of Richmond demonstrated a similar technique, but with materials beyond the traditional flint that Native Americans used. He had one bright green arrowhead he made from fiber optic plastic.
Other classes focused on food: oyster mushroom inoculation, hunting wild mushrooms, growing herbs and strawberries, making sauerkraut, growing nut trees, starting a community garden, composting, saving seeds and raising backyard chickens.
And still others were about skills for low-cost and back-to-nature living: basic bicycle and auto repair, wildflowers, spinning wool, knitting, making sandals and shoes, natural childbirth, stargazing through a telescope, hitchhiking and wilderness first aid.
"We live in Berea, and this is one of our favorite things to do every year," said Chris Smith, an emergency room nurse who taught the wilderness first aid class and came for the weekend with his wife, Katie Gardner, and their two sons.
They were staffing a first aid station among the tents of several social activists groups, including Appalachian Water Watch, Kentucky Heartwood, the Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition and Kentucky Mountain Justice.
"People see a lot of old friends here," Smith said. "It gives them a break from protesting what they don't like and learning more about what they do like."
There was a contra dance Thursday night, and traditional music concerts Friday and Saturday evenings. Pam Gadd of Nashville came to perform with the New Coon Creek Girls string band and teach workshops on banjo playing and songwriting. She also wanted to take the composting workshop.
Wendy Welch of the Tale of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore in Big Stone Gap, Va., led a "running a successful small business in Appalachia" workshop, a skill Cooper wants to emphasize more at future festivals.
"Many workshop leaders come to the festival and talk about whatever their passion is, and often they are making a little business out of it," said Cooper, who is trying to start a new organization, the Appalachian Small and Micro Business Alliance.
"It would be kind of a chamber of commerce to help nurture and grow these small startup businesses in the region," Cooper said. "As we look toward the end of coal, we're going to need lots of ways to create new economic models in Appalachia."
Tom Eblen: (859) 231-1415. Email: teblen@herald-leader.com. Twitter: @tomeblen. Blog: Tomeblen.bloginky.com.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/07/16/2716526/tom-eblen-whippoorwill-festival.html#disqus_thread#storylink=cpy
Folksinger Eric George from Vermont ericgeorge.bandcamp.com - Photo by Meg Wilson, http://blog.megwilsonphotography.com/
For more photos go to the Gallery page
2013 Performers
The New Coon Creek Girls
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The Tillers
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The New Old Cavalry
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Mitch Barrett
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Morning Circle at the Whippoorwill Festival 2012
End of the drought!
