2015 Festival Dates: July 9 - 12
@ HomeGrown HideAways near Berea, KY
Jan 22, 2015 Update: We are starting to book workshops for the 2015 festival. If you are interested in being a workshop leader, please contact us using the contact page or email davecooper928@yahoo.com
New ideas are welcomed and hands-on workshops are great. All workshops are 2 hours long and you can expect 10-30 people in each workshop (there will be 5-8 simultaneous workshops).
New ideas are welcomed and hands-on workshops are great. All workshops are 2 hours long and you can expect 10-30 people in each workshop (there will be 5-8 simultaneous workshops).
2014 Whippoorwill photos by Meg Wilson
www.blog.megwilsonphotography.com
www.blog.megwilsonphotography.com
Festival News
News coverage from the Richmond Register
News coverage from KY Forward Essay by festival participant Kevin Hart 2014 Workshops
Home Canning & Advanced Home Canning * Consent * Radical Education * Kombucha * Wilderness First Aid * Hunting Edible Wild Mushrooms * Basic Bicycle Maintenance * Dumpstering * Ecological Design/Forest Gardening Walk * Scything * Straw Bale Construction * Make Your Own River Cane Flute * Making Cheese * Group Decision-Making and Facilitation * How To Purify Water/Survival Techniques * How Not To Get Lost in the Woods * Living Without a Fridge * Permaculture in Action: Off Grid, Natural Building and No-Till Farming * Puppet Building * Seven Herbal Allies to Survive the 21st Century * Rain Gardens & Building a Monarch Butterfly Waystation * Field Trip: Passive Solar Home Construction and Learning to Live off the Grid* 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 * Breadmaking on an Open Fire * Nature Walk for Kids and Families * Shaker Singing * Hammock Camping * Astronomy and Star Gazing * Recycling Humanure * Confronting the Fast Food Industry * Hackeysack * Confronting Privilege * The Root of All Resistance: Stopping Your Avoid-Dance and Starting Your Abundance * Animal Rights and Speciesism * Back-Saving Posture Techniques for Hard Labor * Stick Tag * Living Gluten Free * Mountaintop Removal and the Citizen Opposition Movement * School Bus Living and Making a Simple Rocket Stove * Make Your Own Toothpaste and Shampoo * Make Mead Like a Viking* Earthships * Quitting Facebook * Earth Evolution and Gaia Theory * Animism, Goddess Worship and Ancestral Healing * Solar Powered Clothes Dryer * Making Protest Signs * Fermenting Kim Chi and Sauerkraut * Simple Living: Getting Your Needs Met * Joule Thief: Power Your Flashlight With a Dead Battery * Tiny Houses * Foraging For Beauty * Thru-Hiking the Appalachian Trail * Wildflower Walk * DIY Happiness * Massage Therapy for Dogs and Cats - and Horses* Thai Massage * The Power of Birth: Doulas, Intactivism, Babywearing, and more * Conscious Parenting * Making Art from Japanese Bush Honeysuckle * Identifying Summer Wildflowers * A Visit With Miss Edna * Making Things from Old Pallets * Tarot Reading * Cordage * Build a Solar Shower and Easy Solar Hot Water Heater*
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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 musicians Andrew Taylor, Becca Miller, Joe Spencer and Berea caller Joe Wilkie. Everyone at the festival is welcome to participate, and this is included in your admission. For folks from Berea and surrounding areas who want to come to the contra dance only, admission is $8. Contra dance will start around 7:00 or 7:30.
Honey and the Bee and the Wildrovers will be performing music for children during the day.
We will also have a Cake Walk! To raise money for a good cause.
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 will have burgers and veggie burgers grilled by the Village Trough, a new performance venue, restaurant and community center in the Old Town area of Berea. Check 'em out here!
Thanks! And we are looking forward to another great festival July 9-12, 2015.
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 musicians Andrew Taylor, Becca Miller, Joe Spencer and Berea caller Joe Wilkie. Everyone at the festival is welcome to participate, and this is included in your admission. For folks from Berea and surrounding areas who want to come to the contra dance only, admission is $8. Contra dance will start around 7:00 or 7:30.
Honey and the Bee and the Wildrovers will be performing music for children during the day.
We will also have a Cake Walk! To raise money for a good cause.
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 will have burgers and veggie burgers grilled by the Village Trough, a new performance venue, restaurant and community center in the Old Town area of Berea. Check 'em out here!
Thanks! And we are looking forward to another great festival July 9-12, 2015.
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!
