Second Annual Open Farm Day Tour In Barnstead

The Barnstead Farmers and Gardeners Network is sponsoring the Second Annual Barnstead Open Farm Day being held on July 27th, 2013. This is a self-guided tour of 8 local farms. The tour will run from 10 am to 4 pm.

This year, we are joining with the Suncook Valley Arts and Artisans Tour. This great group of local artisans will display their finest wares for your approval. 

This event is a family-friendly, free event and anyone in the New England Region is encouraged to attend. Maps will be available at The Barnstead Community Market, located at 13A Parade Rd, or at Sticks and Stones Farm, located at 107 White Oak Rd, both in Barnstead, New Hampshire

You can find more information at the Barnstead Community Market website http://barnsteadcommunitymarket.homestead.com/. Find the Barnstead Farmers and Gardeners Network on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheBarnsteadFarmersAndGardenersNetwork?ref=bf and find the Artists website at http://www.suncookvalleyartisans.org/.

Contacts for the event are Robin Donovan (603) 269-5591 or Don Walker (603) 435-0277.

Christopher Gentile, son of Jean and Angelo Gentile, graduated in May from the University of Utah ROTC program with a Bachelor of Arts in History. He was then commissioned Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. He will report to the USMC Basic School in Quantico, VA in May 2014. Christopher is a 2009 graduate of Prospect Mountain High School.

Barnstead Police Department Report Accident

On July 9, 2013 at 8:28 am the Barnstead Police and Barnstead Fire Rescue were dispatched to a motor vehicle accident involving a single vehicle on Beauty Hill Road in the Town of Barnstead. It was further reported that the vehicle had rolled over and was submerged in a pond. During the emergency response it was reported that the sole female occupant (driver) of the vehicle had freed herself from the vehicle and was seen walking around at the scene. No serious injuries were reported.

The driver, Elizabeth Smith, 20 years of age of Barnstead, NH, indicated a deer had crossed the road in front of the vehicle she was driving (2004 Honda Accord 4 door) and she swerved to avoid striking the animal thereby losing control of the vehicle. Evidence at the scene showed that the vehicle initially was traveling westbound on Beauty Hill Road, left the south side of the paved portion of the roadway, swerved and left the north side of the paved portion of the roadway, swerved again at which time it struck a rock wall head on. Upon striking the rock wall, the vehicle became airborne and subsequently came to rest upside-down in the pond being completely submerged except for the bottom half of the wheels.

The vehicle was recovered by Loudon Garage. New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services was dispatched to assess the scene. No charges are pending at this time; no suspicion of alcohol or drugs being involved.

Suncook Valley Art And Farm Show

Submitted By Steve Winchester

Now in its second year, the Suncook Valley Art and Artisan Tour will be held on Saturday, July 27, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.  This year we are teaming up with the Barnstead Open Farm Day, also in its second year, to highlight some of the artistic and agricultural richness the area has to offer. Included in the tour will be works of art by three Winchester siblings: Liz Winchester-Larson, Harriet Winchester, and Stephen Winchester.  Here is a little bit about our work and artistic journeys.

Dad wanted us to be proficient at math. Sometimes at dinner, he would give me and my two sisters word problems or percent equations to solve.  All three pairs of our eyes would glaze over.  Math as an abstract subject, much to Dad’s disappointment, was just not in our genes.  We owe a lot of our talent to the other genes passed along to us. Dad was a multi-talented, interested-in-everything, gentle soul, and Mom taught us quiet thought and perseverance, among many other artistic traits.

We were always drawing, painting, or tinkering. Harriet once entered one of those contests in a magazine in which they invite children to re-draw a picture. I remember she was so mad at getting a notice disqualifying her from the contest, stating that the contestants weren’t eligible if they traced the drawing. She hadn’t! I sometimes wonder if that was an unlikely start to her pursuit of perfection. For many years, Harriet worked in pastel, able to make a glass vase appear so real that you would think you could reach in and pick it up, or a sky so transparent, you could almost feel the temperature of the air. Harriet has now returned to oils after decades of breathing in pastel dust.  Tree portraits are her current focus, and the perfection and “aliveness” of her rendering of these venerable giants of the New Hampshire landscape is no less than amazing.  

Liz is the oldest of the three siblings. She went away to college in the late ‘60s while I was still in grade school. I remember Dad driving down to Brooklyn in the black 1966 Ford Fairlane to pick her up from Pratt Institute for the summer. She would bring home big paintings and three-dimensional architectural models (Liz majored in interior design).  I would listen to stories about art school:  big, bold brush strokes, nude models, etchings, linoleum cuts, brayers, inks!  Liz has designed and cut countless linoleum block prints and painted gorgeous oils and watercolors. Her current work is in colored pencil.  Many painstaking layers of colored  pencil are applied to the paper, resulting in beautiful still lives inviting the viewer to enter into the composition and pick up and taste the pear.

My journey from an idyllic childhood in the country surrounded by cows and apples, serenaded by whip-poor-wills, to furniture maker, was one of self-exploration and discovery.  Like many woodworkers, I started out in the house-building trades.  I still have my first woodworking project from age 10 or so; a cane I made from a tree root I picked up in the woods. Natural forms have always interested me.  Adirondack-style furniture, cabinetry, and accessories are my main focus.  Recently I have been incorporating paintings on birch bark into some of my work, adding moss, twigs, sand, and pebbles to create base relief.  I used stained glass to depict a pond in one recent commission.

Stop by my studio during the tour on July 27 (you’ll recognize it by its artfully twisted chimney), and view our paintings.  Be sure to check out the other artists and artisans on the tour, and visit some local farms along the way.  

For more information, contact Steve Winchester at 603-269-2720, email [email protected], or visit www.SuncookValleyArtisans.org or www.facebook.com/SuncookValleyArtArtisanTour or www.facebook.com/TheBarnsteadFarmersAndGardenersNetwork

Gathering On The Green

The Gathering On The Green will be held on Saturday, August 24, 2013, 9 am to 2 pm on the Barnstead Parade Church Grounds.

We will be renting a 20 x 15 space for crafters, yard salers, veggies sales, etc. If you are interested, please call Jeanne at 269-5441. Please leave a message and I will return your call.

The Gathering is sponsored by the Barnstead Parade Congregational Church Missions Committee. Any and all proceeds go to local missions in the town. We had a wonderful time last year and hope to see you this year on the Greens.

The Philbricks

Statistics bear out this melancholy assessment: Spain has 47 million people, and while most were baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, less than 10 percent of the population attend church. The evangelical church is even smaller -- less than 1 percent of the population, by most estimates.

Under the dictator Francisco Franco (who ruled from 1939 until 1975), Roman Catholicism was the state church, and evangelicals experienced discrimination and persecution. The 1978 Spanish constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, but for those living then, the damage to religion was done. Catholicism had become associated with Franco’s brutality, and evangelicalism was either nonexistent or seen as a foreign import by the famously insular Spanish.

But there are growing signs of life; Church missions to Spain are spreading the Gospel and the number of evangelicals in Spain has nearly doubled (due to immigration from Latin America). The Philbricks will be visiting at the Center Barnstead Christian Church on Sunday, July 21st.  They will be speaking during our 10:00 AM Morning Worship time.  

Upon their arrival in 1997 they helped for a few years in a church work underway in Barcelona city, while working teaching ESL and doing outreach in their own city just outside of Barcelona.  In 2004 they opened the Advance Center, owned by “Connecta--Associació Cristiana”, the non-profit Spanish Christian association they work with, a small store front which offers English classes and houses Ebenezer Editions (small Christian publisher for outreach).  The office and small classroom space is also used for their association work, counseling, parenting classes, Bible studies, disciplining, etc.  They also lead a young small church, and a youth group of mostly university age youth (plus some high schoolers) and young adults, meeting mostly in their home for lack of a a meeting place. Come meet the Philbrick Family this Sunday and hear more of how God is working in Spain.  The Center Barnstead Christian Church is located on Route 126, next to the Town Hall.  For more information please call the church at 269-8831.

Ladies’ Tea