Disappointed

I was getting pretty excited about selling my baskets at Mountain Magic in Fall, a local festival here in Buchanan, VA.

Then the rain began  It rained off and on for about 5 days.  The last 24 hours or so dropped over 5 inches.  Many inches came poring out of the sky in just a few hours. 

 

The James River is up and the carnival grounds in Buchanan, where they hold the festival, are soaked.  So the Town Of Buchanan decided to push the festival back to next Saturday.  The Saturday when I will be in Texas.  That Saturday.

So now I have bins of baskets. Bunches of bins of baskets.  Scads of baskets.  Sixty-six baskets.

I will put them away and wait for the next Buchanan festival.  Or maybe I will start an Etsy site.

 

Either way, I will sell them somewhere.

But in the meantime, there are some other shapes and things I want to try with the baskets that I put off learning.  I wanted to make as many baskets as possible in as many styles as I was comfortable making, so I put off my experimentation.

So now I get to go play around and I don't have to worry about producing.  So, that will be fun.

But I REALLY wanted to try selling them and see if other people like my baskets as much as I do.

Storm

The last few days have been full of dramatic weather.  There has been thunder, lightning and near constant rain.  This has resulted in some flooding in our small town of Buchanan. 

Buchanan's famous swinging bridge may soon be a floating bridge.

 

It is not the worst flooding Buchanan has ever seen.  We weren't here, but have heard 1985 was a bad year for that.  But the James River is coming up pretty high and worrying some of the people on Lowe Street.

 

This picture was taken five minutes later and the water is still rising.
 
 

The road in front of the Twin River Outfitters has flooded and they are moving their boats to higher ground.  Parts of the carnival grounds and the park are under water.

 

The James is swift and brown with lots of muddy water, trees and debris racing down river.  Not a good day for river travel or a leisurely boat ride.

I contacted a future B&B guest who is staying with us and then going out on the river, to make sure the Outfitters will be taking out boats next week and they assured her that things would be back to normal on Monday.

 

The Buchanan Carnival starts next week.  The water should have receded by then, but it may be quite muddy the first few days.

 

The closest tree line is normally at the edge of the embankment down to the James River. 

 

The gazebo in the park is partly underwater.

 

 

The north end of Pico Road is flooded.

 


The people of Buchanan have been through all this before.  Now that the rain has stopped the river will crest and start to recede.  And life will get back to normal!

Mountain Magic 2014

 

This past weekend was the 20th annual Mountain Magic in Fall Festival in Buchanan.  This is a Bluegrass, Antiques and Craft show and this year seemed like the biggest one yet.

 

It has been voted the Top Community Event in the Roanoke Times many times and is really fun.

 

Up until now,  Main Street through Buchanan was closed for the festival.  This year they closed parts of  Lowe Street and used the carnival grounds.  Main Street in Buchanan is a continuation of highway 11 and it is the alternate route for I-81.  When there is an accident on 81, they route everybody, big rig trucks and all, through the tiny town of Buchanan. This is not a good mix with closed streets and festival attendees.

 

In my opinion, the park is the perfect place for the festival. 

 

There was ample, close parking, the vendors were all in one location without having a long line of them, and they were able to open the buildings for the local organizations to sell or make food for their favorite charities.

 

This was also a better venue for the various musical groups.  Young and old, everyone loves the music!

 

The bandstand was perfect and there was a lot more room in front for the music lovers to set up their chairs,

 

grab some fair food and kick back.

 

There are even covered places to sit and eat.

 

It seemed to me that there were more people, but not as many antique cars as I had seen, or maybe noticed, previously.  I used to have to hike out to the end of the town for the line of antique cars and then back to get some great fair food.  That is usually my favorite part of any festival.  This time it was a short walk to al the rows of vendors.  I would anticipate even more people enjoying this new location.

 

Did you get your Buchanan Fries?  No?  Well, there's always next year

Elderberry's

 

A new place to eat has opened up recently in Daleville.  Elderberry's is in a cute little house and serves a variety of smoothies, wraps and teas.

We had noticed the construction and then started to see cars and people on the front porch.  It looked like a cute place and Lee and I decided to stop in and check it out.

We were there after 1:00 and it was packed.  The service was fast and the food was great.

 

Lee and I split a wrap and each got a different smoothie.  You HAVE to do that in order to determine if more than one flavor of smoothie is good.  I sipped some of his and he sipped some of mine.   They were both great.  Next time we will have to each get a wrap and split a smoothie.  The smoothies were huge and the wraps were not very big.  Lot of delicious flavor, but without the smoothie I would have been hungry with half of a wrap.  One wrap is a plentiful meal, though.

One other advantage of splitting a smoothie...we both got brain freeze.  Too much cold.  Or maybe they were so good we slurped them down too fast.

 

There are a few tables inside of Elderberry's, but mostly people used them as places to sit while they were waiting for their orders to be called. 

 

There are a few places out on the deck with tables of various sizes and a great padded area to enjoy your treat.  While we were there, most people took their orders and left.

There was a nice mix of young kids and older people.  Oh, my.  Were we the older people?  Probably.

I am thrilled with a new place to eat in Daleville.  I wish someone would open something in Buchanan, but there are not enough people there to justify the expense.  So we will take the drive, or treat ourselves when we are in "town" for other things.

We suggest you do the same.

Mountain Magic in Fall

Lee entered the truck he is almost finished rebuilding in the Mountain Magic In Fall festival.  They close off the main street in Buchanan and have Bluegrass music, vendors and a car show.  Each year the festival gets bigger.  I parked in town and had quite a hike to get to the end of the vendors.  That is where the car show starts.  I heard that this year they had more than 100 vendors.

 

 

Not all the vendor spaces are selling things.  There are also politicians ready to convince you to vote for them.  There are various church groups, businesses, raffles or charities hoping to get your attention or dollars.  All the local antique shops are open and doing big business.  It is fun!

And I won't even go into the food you should never eat, but is ubiquitous at these kinds of events.  This is the first year that I was able to avoid a funnel cake.  Yay, me!  I was unable to avoid a pulled pork BBQ sandwich and most of a cotton candy on a paper cone.  Bad me.  But you must help support the local charities.  It is the thing to do.  All for them and not for me.

 

The day started out cool and overcast.  We got there early, about 8, so that we could get a close spot to all the action.  It was pretty close, but it was still a long walk to the center of town with the music.  As the day went along it became quite hot, in the high 80's.  So much so that I moved the chairs we brought into the shade the truck made. After all, it took me three years of working in the library to get rid of the farmer's tan I got from one year of working on clearing the property when we first moved here. 

I was hunched over by the front wheel and almost invisible to the passing crowds on the other side of the truck.  This afforded me the opportunity to hear a lot of the comments.  We noticed our biggest fans were old men in John Deere ball caps and young boys in John Deere T-shirts.

A very young girl with a high pitched voice said, "Green...and yellow!  Shiny!"

An older gentleman to his grandson, " My daddy had one of these.  We have a picture of him with it in the field."

A teenaged girl, "This is awesome!"  And a teenaged boy, "Nice looking truck.  If I had $15,00, I'd buy it."  He didn't and he won't, but it was nice to hear.

And another favorite, "15,000.  Is that all?"

Lots of people took pictures.  One couple seemed very enthusiastic.  I asked if either of them would like their picture taken to be put on my blog.  I warned them that if they were in the Witness Protection Program, that they should decline.  He did.  She didn't.

 


Does this mean he is in the WPP?

No Rush

Here is my advice.  It's free  Take it or leave it. 

NEVER tell someone that there is no rush for their services. 

Our architect, whom we do not recommend for many reasons, took SIX MONTHS to give us the finished drawings.  After two months we started gently pushing.  After four months I was mad.  After six months we took the drawings and ran to the county and THEN found out they had made multiple mistakes we thought they had corrected months ago.

 

Not so recently Lee took the truck he had just finished restoring to get paint.  "No rush, " he says.  We just got it back today.  It took them over three months.

 

There were many excuses.  They had to re-spray.  They couldn't re-spray because it was raining.  It has been raining for months, I agree.  But surely there are businesses where it rains a lot that can still get the job done.

No matter.  Here it is.

 

Now Lee can put the flat bed back on it and free up the lift for other work he has been putting off.

But what do you think?  Do you like the John Deere colors? Lee figured a flat bed truck would most likely go to a farmer and they just love that green paint!  It will match their tractors.  Once he finishes with it, we will drive it to a few cruise-ins.  Maybe display it for Mountain Magic In Fall in Buchanan.

Then sell it. 

But there is no rush.