So I’ve just gotten home from the Fort, where I stayed for a whole week. One week with minimal running water (cold only, from a single slow tap in the staff kitchen, which I had to then carry to where I was cooking/cleaning/etc). One week with minimal electricity (I could charge my phone at night, and there was a light in the kitchen, and a fridge because I do cooking demos and we don’t want to poison people). One week with almost no social media, news, television, and all the rest of the modern stuff. One week of walking from place to place, interacting in person, baking and cooking over a fire. One week without a shower (that one was difficult lol).
While I was there, the Fort was hosting “The Original” which is the name of a 40+ year old Rendezvous. This is for folks who portray anything from French and Indian War up to War of 1812 and a bit beyond (basically 1740 to 1840). They have some very specific rules that are required of those attending. You must be dressed in period correct clothing (including footwear and eyeglasses unless medically required otherwise) during the entire event, including during set up and tear down. You must have all modern items covered at all times, so if you have a cooler it needs to have something over it or be stashed in an unseen part of your tent. Same with propane stoves, though most people just dug fire pits and cooked that way. It’s rather intense just how serious they take it, though they’re also not rude to people who are just starting out and might not be “quite right.” A good, honest attempt is worth more than perfection, in most cases.
During the event, I was one of the Fort “liaison” people, meaning folks at the Rendezvous could reach out to me to get in touch with the director. I didn’t get called on much, which was nice, but it meant I could visit and participate in Rendezvous stuff without having to pay to get in (which I could not afford). I baked a bunch of bread on the second day of the event, and then loaded it all (still warm) into a huge basket and hefted it onto my shoulder. I went down to the lower field, calling as I went: “Bread for sale! Fresh, warm bread for sale!”
I was accosted. People who were in the top part of the field, near where I’d entered, came running out of their tents and thrust cash at me. I didn’t even make it to the end of the first row of tents before running out of loaves! I did finish my walk around the site, and promised people I’d bake more bread the next day. It was a lot of fun, and a TON of work. I need to learn better methods for making large batches of bread dough.
During that walk around, I found people who wanted to learn how to bake bread, so I invited them to join me the following day for “lessons” in bread baking. They eagerly agreed. My two students showed up at 9am to help fire the big beehive oven in the center courtyard of the Fort. Then we went off to make dough.
The entire experience was so wonderful. My students (on both of the days I offered lessons) were gracious and engaged. They all produced (entirely by their own hand, as I walked them through the process but otherwise left them to their own devices) lovely, crispy loaves of bread. They went back to their camps in the afternoon with their warm loaves, grinning and proud of their success. Heck, I was proud of their success! It led to my being asked to teach more about bread baking at next year’s Rendezvous, which I’m very happy to do.
All of this leads to the point of today’s missive. After I was all done teaching, people wanted my bread recipe. I realized that the best place to find it was here, on the Vine. And then I thought, hmmm… I may not want to do that. I am very VERY careful not to mix business and politics, because I don’t want to lose customers. But it seemed worth it to try. I know a lot of Rev War folk are conservative, so I quietly approached the subject.
“I don’t want to get into modern politics at Rendezvous, but the best place to find my recipe for bread is actually on Chris’s blog, Vine of Liberty. But it’s a very staunch 2A site with a lot of conservative people, so if you want to wait, I will happily email you the recipe once I’m home.”
I was told, time and again, “Oh, we’re all happy Trump folk here!” They went off with the recipe and the link to the Vine, happy and excited to have a new place to talk to other conservatives. Even the lesbians there were conservatives, and hysterically funny, I might add.
I made a host of conservative lady friends, all of whom would like to chat with me outside of Rendezvous (because we really do try to keep modern stuff, especially but not only politics, out of the event). I am hoping to see quite a few of them turn up on here. I felt loved, and accepted. It was a lovely, warm feeling. I don’t have any other conservative women in my life (that I know about), so this is something that’s incredibly special to me. Here are women who took the time to tell me about vlogs and podcasts and YouTube channels that cater to women like us. They shared so many things with me, and it was grand.
So if you see some new names popping up here at the Vine, thank the living history folks who were so gracious and welcoming to me!
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