Visiting Minnesota Historical Society

What an amazing adventure! On February 16, 2019, I was very lucky to be able to visit the Minnesota Historical Society for the Native American Artist-in-Residence’s Gathering of Native Artists. I brought my sister who is also an artist to share the experience. Our mother came also, she works for the Oneida Community Library. She was very excited to view their collection and visit the Society.

I got to meet Ben and Rita from the Historical Society which was a pleasure! I think what was the most beneficial part of the visit was getting to talk with a previous Artist-in-Residence, Holly Young. She shared her experiences as being a NAAIR recipient and also gave us tips on application.

The second best part was getting to visit the collection. THAT WAS AMAZING!!!! I so hope to visit again when the weather is nicer and to get more time on viewing pieces.

I wanted to share some pictures of one of my favorite piece I saw that day. Surprising it wasn't a raised beadwork piece. The pictures look a little yellow and that is great because they special lighting that helps with protecting the pieces from light damage. I like this piece because of the beads used. I have never seen anything like it before. There is a metallic pink bead and I have never seen that before. 

I'm hope to create a piece of beadwork that is inspired by this bandolier bag.

Olú·yaˀ Niwahsohkó·tʌ O·nʌ́steˀ

Last year we grew blue corn at my parent's house. 

This was all that we were able to get:

8 cobs of corn. The garden was 20 ft by 30 ft.

This year we planted our blue corn in a 12 ft by 12 ft garden and on a bit of higher ground too, but still in my parent's yard. The rows of corn were closer together however and we had a total of seven rows altogether this year. We also put on fish emulsion on all the rows but one. In total we added fish emulsion to the six of the rows five times over the growing season. We also planting squash and pumpkins around the garden.



Started the squash seeds May 22, 2016.


We planted the blue corn May 23, 2016



May 28th squash seeds sprouting.

Exciting our blue corn is over a foot!

A photo posted by Eliza Skenandore (@starrmerrie) on Jun 20, 2016 at 6:40pm PDT

July 4th, my dad pretending the corn was up to his shoulders. We added fish emulsion today too, because the garden is so small we just use water jugs and apply right to the corn.

Our blue corn is getting so large! :)

A photo posted by Eliza Skenandore (@starrmerrie) on Jul 4, 2016 at 10:23am PDT

9/24/2016

9/24/2016

We harvested the corn today 10/09/2016.

This was the corn that we got from the row that did not have fish emulsion on it. It had a total of 11 stalks and got eight cobs but only three and a half with corn on on it.


On the six rows of blue corn that we put fish emulsion on we got a total of 34 of full cobs not all are pictured below. It had an average of 15 stalks in each row.

Next year we will be doing fish emulsion again because we saw a huge difference in the amount of cobs we got.

Sandpaper Letters

I am creating my own Montessori materials for my childcare and I think that sandpaper letters are very important to help with language development. I purchased all the materials at the Dollar Tree. In total it cost me $9.45 not including the glue I already had and I have some materials left over for other projects.

I looked all over Microsoft Word for the correct text to be used, but I didn't find anything I liked. I ended up googling and found this awesome blog that pointed to this site http://www.montessorimaterials.org/lang2.html and used Cursive - Lower Case.

I cutted them out from the pdf and then traced them on the yellow foam sheets. I glued them down using Turbo tacky glue by Aleene's. Vowels on blue and consonants on red.

I really liked how this project turned out and I can't wait to share it with my toddler.

Beading again!

I'm every excited to be beading again.  This weekend I made these three flowers.  I don't have a project in mind but ideas are starting to flow.  Excited!

Soil Health Video is Done!

I just finished the Soil Health video last week. Thought I'd share. Took a little bit longer then I would have liked. There were a lot of slides and was just a long video in general.

White Corn Project Farmers

So after the soil heath training we had our first meeting as project farmers.

Laura gave us the update of the project, our duties, and where we will be planting this year and next year. We each got a binder of the project and I also bought the CDs of seed songs that we will be playing in our gardens as we tend to them.

There was still a great crowd of white corn growers from our area after all the family gardeners left.

Princess Lea updated us on other sources for seeds and opportunities out east. 

Ola•ná made by Laura with their white corn from last season. 

White Corn and Soil Health Presentation

Our first gathering as Project Farmers. It was an awesome event and the food was good!

There was a huge group of people that showed up.  I was surprised. I thought maybe 12 or so people would be there but there had to be at least 30!

People arriving , signing in,  and visiting.

All three walls and tables were filled!

Valerire Dantoin, a Sustainable Food & Ag Instructor at NWTC, came and did the presentation on her own time. So thankful for her and sharing her knowledge with us. 

One of the biggest things I learned was fish emulsion and fish meal are some of the highest ways to get nitrogen in the soil while still staying organic. There are other cheaper ways, but not organic, but are they really cheaper if you think about it... 

Also that she spends mother's day putting compost on her fields. So good to remember and easy to remember that way!

I think also she explained GMOs better than any other way I ever heard it. I video recorded her presentation and will be uploading it on YouTube.  I'll share the link after it has been edited.