2016 Adirondack Rural Skills and Homesteading Festival

Submitted by Rick LeVitre

Executive Director, Cornell Cooperative Extension Franklin County

The 2016 Adirondack Rural Skills and Homesteading Festival will be held Saturday, October 1st at the Paul Smith’s College’s Adirondack Visitor’s Center or “the VIC”.

The Adirondack Rural Skills and Homesteading Festival celebrates the talents of a bygone era with a distinctly Adirondack flair. With featured exhibitions on logging and farming with draft horses, and a demonstration of competitive lumberjack sports by the Paul Smith’s College Woodsmen’s Team, the festival also offers dozens of workshops that appeal to a wide range of interests such as canning, cider making, woodworking, renewable energy, cord wood construction, small-scale farming, and primitive skills.

The Adirondack-North Country is uniquely positioned to serve as a model for diverse and vibrant working landscapes. Rooted in a culture of stewardship and entrepreneurial spirit, Paul Smith’s College, the VIC and Cornell Cooperative Extension advance a multi-sector vision that connects the region’s “foodsheds” and “woodsheds” as integrated components of the working landscape. Beyond sustainable agriculture and forestry, the festival highlights additional related sectors such as education, agri-tourism, biomass development, education, and sustainable food system development.

Paul Smith’s College, the College of the Adirondacks, and its Adirondack Visitors Center, the VIC, along with partner Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Franklin County, serve as the center for these diverse and vibrant concepts and projects involving working landscapes. With the culture of the College rooted in hospitality, environmental stewardship and the entrepreneurial spirit, the Center provides an identity for the interdisciplinary vision that connects the College’s academic programming with the economic reality of the region. CCE brings to the partnership its long history of research based education in agriculture, food systems and food nutrition and safety.

The festivities take place Saturday, October 1st from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. $5/person or $10/carload. Free for the Paul Smith’s College community and Friends of the VIC.