Of Farms and Fables combines the efforts of professional and non-professional artists by engaging artists in farm work and farm workers in storytelling and acting. The result will be an original performance in October of 2011 which will engage performers and audience in dialogue about local agriculture, farming, and the future of small family farms in Maine.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

A day in the life of "Of Farms and Fables" ...in JULY (Claire)

This past week has been a very eventful week for the Of Farms and Fables crew. Summer, with all its humid heat and tourists and hustle and bustle is very much upon us in Southern Maine and our farmers all have that crazed look in their eyes that pants "Its JULY. HELP!"

At "Of Farms and Fables" HQ, We've been feeling the heat and the pressure of putting together all the details of our upcoming production and trying to fortify ourselves as best we could, but we were very very pleased to welcome Cory back from Germany this week for a little visit! We kept her to ourselves for a little while, but after we caught up and worked through the script (a meeting that ended at the beach more out of necessity than anything) we decided we ought to share her with the rest of our collaborators and friends.
The next day we all piled into the car:
And headed out to catch up on all the happenings with our farmers. First stop: Jordan's Farm.
Where we caught PeeWee and Tali having lunch. It was so nice to feel like this was such a familiar scene- we lived it all last summer and wrote back and forth about it all winter long as Cory was developing the script.So we took a seat at the picnic table, chatted about PeeWee's upcoming anniversary and speculated about the rain, and when the guys had to head back out to work, we piled back into the car to check out our performance venue, Camp Ketcha.

The Camp was FULL of summer camp kids (on "rainy day schedule" so the great hall was a little busy with a particularly rousing game of Simon Says.) so we took a little look around and then made our way out to see everyone at the Benson Farm. Not suprisingly, things there were bussiness as usual too- Ryan was helping to get a dry cow's hooves cleaned, Eddie wanted to show us his iphone and newest hunting trophy ("We like to call it "Tacky!" he announced to us as he towards the largest stuffed deer head any of us had ever seen.") before heading out to supervise getting in the hay.

Broadturn Farm was also buzzing when we got there- two weddings this weekend, plus all the regular CSA responsibilities... But we were very excited to get a little peak at the nearly-ready-to-open farmstand they have been working on and the very tail end of farm camp. After catching up on the gossip and goings on in the dooryard, we again motored on to pick up the fresh-off the press copies of the our second draft of the script!
So naturally, back to Jennie's house for a bout 10 minutes to change, pick up dinner and on to the Cape Elisabeth Lion's Club to read it with our farmers, members of the Cape Farm Alliance and our new costume designer! (Welcome, Renee!)
Not bad for a day, eh? Many thanks to all those that took a break from their work days to
say hello and even rallied to come to a reading after a long day. Jennie and I will be keeping in
touch until Cory comes back to us in a few weeks. 'Till then- a little mini photo album of our day
on the road.
-enjoy!
Claire