A Day at the Shaker Village

Dear Diary,

A wonderful day at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village.  I brought my little basket of apples and they pressed them into cider.  I used their mulling spices when I got home and it was just delicious.  I got some of their wool too for knitting projects and stocked up on their culinary herbal blends.  The Shakers have been famous for their herbs for 200 years. I particularly recommend Brother Arnold's Pork Rub.  You can order them on-line here.

Going to visit and photograph their Highland cattle I had a "flash from the past" experience.  There on the ground were chestnuts (those green spikey balls in the collage).  I grew up on Chestnut Street and there was one tree near our house with these amazing pods.  Their spikes were like Velcro and you could build pyramids with them.  I've added an extra photo of them in their various stages of opening.

I spoke a little with Brother Arnold and found out Sister Francis is feeling much better.  I was so pleased to hear that.  She is 86 and I met her for the first time 35 years ago when she lived at the Canterbury Village.  I bought her autobiography, "Growing up Shaker".  When I go to the Christmas Fair in December I'll have her autograph it. This is one of their maxims that I've always felt drawn to:

Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow.