Prairie Days at George Washington Carver

No matter whether you call it Autumn Daze, Harvest Festival or Prairie Days, this area is loaded with events to celebrate a gathering of folks. For several years, the National Park at the George Washington Carver site in Diamond, Missouri has hosted Prairie Days to celebrate farm life of the 1860’s and 1870’s. We have never been able to go due to some conflict of interest. Today ignoring some clouds and hoping they would vanish, we headed south. The day turned delightful and it was great to walk around the park seeing the events.

Dutch oven cooking...buffalo stew and biscuits...

                                                                                              How to do laundry the old fashioned way...

There was music and food, storytellers, wagon rides, prairie walks and working displays. Some of the working displays were spinning, weaving, soap making, candle making, corn shelling, Dutch oven cooking, butter churning and there was even lessons on how to do your laundry once you had made some lye soap. There was no way we could get it all in, but we did as much as possible. One thing I learned from a native plant booth was that passion fruit is native to the area. I had no idea! I thought it was tropical. Do you grow any passion fruit plant?

What caught my eye was nationally known and award winning story teller Bobby Norfolk. I had never seen Bobby Norfolk in person, and I was so glad to enjoy his talents today. Norfolk worked as a park ranger at the Arch in St. Louis for about ten years during the late 1970’s. It was there the storytelling bug bit him when the first Storytelling Festival was held there. Norfolk did selections from Paul Lawrence Dunbar and he did a Civil War history lesson taking listeners through Lincoln’s time, slavery and stories of the Underground Railroad.

Be sure and check around you for a local autumn celebration. And if you are anywhere close to Bobby Norfolk, go have him tell you a story! You will be mesmerized with his talent.