There are lots of pictures this week.

Cheese Production

Kathryn is at Cricket Creek in Williamstown, MA these days, making cheese. (The $24/pound kind. We’ll have some available for Thanksgiving dinner). We took a 4-day trip to visit. Tuesday was mostly driving up. We arrived mid-afternoon, and had a brief view of cheese production. We saw cow milking, milk storage, the cheese aging room, and lots of stainless steel.

Shaker Village; round barn in the background

We were discussing where we wanted to eat dinner. I suggested visiting the nearby retirement community. We would say we were thinking of moving up here to be close to our daughter. If we got there about 4, we could probably get a free dinner so we could see if we like the food. I thought it was a great idea, but cooler heads prevailed. We had an excellent Mexican dinner at Coyota Flaco.

Pie Oven – The main dish for most dinners was some kind of pie

Wednesday we visited the Hancock Shaker village. We had seen the Canterbury Shaker Village many years ago. The Shaker’s were a large utopian society with several prosperous villages. Their most striking characteristics were the unique dance they did during worship, and their insistence that all members remained celibate. At it’s largest, this village had about 100 people.

Window detail. Note the thumb screws. It’s easy to lock the window open or closed; or to remove the window for cleaning.

Visiting Hancock was quite interesting. There are *very* enthusiastic docents giving talks on many subjects. While the docents were always interesting, they would let their talks run way over the allotted time, which meant we had to leave one talk before it was over so we could see another talk on another subject. We found it striking how often docents bemoaned the large number of buildings the Shakers tore down. The non-profit that took over the village is interested in preserving the past as much as possible. This was in direct contrast to the Shakers, who were forward-looking and practical. They readily adopted new technology and were interested in the most efficient operation possible given the size of their community and the technology available to them.

Round Barn

The Shakers kept their property spotlessly clean and well-organized. They had many clever ideas to make their facilities more practical. The signature building is the round barn, which was used for hay storage and cow milking. But when better methods of milking cows became available, the Shakers promptly built new facilities for milking, leaving the barn useful only for storing hay.

Workshop Lathe

They had a reservoir above the village. They installed a 16″ water pipe with a turbine to generate water power for their workshop. It still works today. There was a second turbine at a workshop for contractors, and a third turbine to run a ceiling fan in the Trustee building.

Atwater Kent Radio

Thursday we visited the museum in Bennington, VT; and the Clark art museum in Williamstown. The Clark is a traditional art museum. The building is very large and modern. The collection is surprisingly large. I enjoyed the Impressionist exhibit, and spent all my time there. The Bennington museum has a large collection of Grandma Moses paintings, as well as several artifacts collected from the area. I especially enjoyed this rare Atwater Kent radio. These were made mostly in the 1920s, before the invention of superheterodyne receivers. Atwater Kent was known for innovations in their electronics, excellence in performance, beautiful styling, and very high price.

Ryn-hand-made Shoes – on her own feet!

Ryn is interested in making things by hand. She slaughters and butchers all manner of animals. She has blacksmithed, made butter churns, built her own smoke house, and more. Lately she has been learning how to make shoes. She made these shoes by hand.

TV in the  ShakerTrustee Building

Our last dinner was a pot-luck that the people at Cricket Creek have every Thursday. The workers at Cricket Creek may not make a lot of money, but they certainly eat well. We had an uneventful drive back Friday. I’ll close this with a picture of a TV in the Shaker Trustee house. I hope this finds everybody doing well.