Smokey House Center hosts Bainum-Goyne Family Reunion – with a twist!

On Thursday, August 19, the day dawned bright, clear, and not too hot. Twenty six members of the Bainum-Goyne family, ranging in age from 7 to over 90, and ranging in place of origin from Boston to DC to California to Washington State, arrived at Smokey House at 9 am.  The family had gathered in Manchester for their annual gathering, but this year decided that it would be fun for the entire family to spend one day of their time together volunteering at a local non-profit. One of the family members, Alex Froom, took on the task of finding an…

The Sugar House Project

A summer full of work and learning

During the summer of 2010, the White Crew (also known as the Carpentry Crew) began construction on the sugar house woodshed attached to the original foundation. It seemed to be a huge project but we put together a great plan. We began by sighting the support beams for the sugar house woodshed and measuring the distance between each beam area. Once these areas were marked, the crew started digging 5 foot holes and it was dirty work! Two days later and the crew looked like prairie dogs – only their heads showing…

CSA harvest

Every week since late May the gardens have been harvested, produce cleaned and boxes packed for CSA delivery. During the summer youth program, the task of washing and packing produce has been rotated among the crews so everyone can see the end result of their hours of hard work in the gardens, planting, weeding and harvesting. As you can see in these photos, the hard work has paid off with beautiful produce. As the summer crew season winds down, we want to say thank you for all of the hard work done by the youth crews as well as thank…

Lights, Camera, Cooking!

Hollywood was on shaky ground last week as Smokey House Center became the star of the show for a day as the production crew of Danger Men Cooking arrived to cook and film for our Thursday Lunch. Head chef Gary Schmidt laid out the menu for an All American Cookout: hamburgers, bar-b-que chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, pasta salad and mint sun-tea. Who could resist a meal like that?

Before all the filming and action of the big day there was a good deal of preparation to do and the Field Studies crew, who would be the stars of…

Sheep!

The second week of the summer program dawned hot and humid! There was lots of work to do, however, and with water bottles in hand, the crews got busy and did what needed to be done.

It was a big week for working with the sheep flock, and the sky blue crew rose to the task. With the help of all of the crews, the flock got moved from pastures on one side of the property to another pasture about a mile away, which involved herding them down the road — always risky business, so many people were at hand…