Copied from, Virginia Knits

On Saturday, May 17th at the Heathsville Farmer's Market, the Northern Neck Spinners and Weavers Group will be holding a fleece to shawl demonstration. The demonstration will begin at 8:30 and conclude either when we are done or 4 p.m. whichever comes first.

We hope to finish before 4…

We will be demonstrating and teaching how to flick and comb wool, spin it on both wheels and spindles and weave the finished singles into a shawl.

The shawl, once completed, will be donated to the Hughlett Inn - Rice's Tavern organization for either a raffle or auction to benefit this teaching and historic preservation organization.

What makes this fleece to shawl demonstration unique is that any visitor interested in participating will be brought in, handed and spindle with some fleece and taught how to spin. Your resulting yarn will be incorporated into the shawl.

That same day at the Farmer's Market they are also celebrating Crab Crawl and will feature food, organic vegetables, locally grown plants, local crafts persons, and more. The Blacksmith shop will be open and the members of that guild will be doing blacksmithing demonstrations next door to where we will be spinning and weaving.

DECEMBER - 2007

1 – Heathsville Golden Christmas – 10-3. RHHT

1-2 – Holiday Open House. Celebrate the holidays with refreshments, tours, tastings, and special holiday wine. 10-5 Sat., 12-5 Sun. Ingleside Oak Grove.

1-2 - George Washington Birthplace Christmas Bazaar. 10-4. Unique gifts in Birthplace book/gift shop at visitor center. Complementary tea, cider, cookies at Log Cabin.

2- Urbanna Holiday House Tour – 10-5. Selected homes and businesses decorated for holiday. 758-9850 $

2 – Tree of Love illumination, Richmond County Courthouse. Christmas caroling, memorial lights, refreshments, tour of decorated museum. 4 pm. Warsaw.

6- “O Come All Ye Faithful” Traditional songs, carols, and hymns sung a capella. Historic Christ Church volunteers and community friends are invited to participate in this seasonal songfest in the beautifully “greened” church. 3:00 pm. Historic Christ Church, Irvington.

7-8 – Annual Christmas at Stratford Hall. 4:30-8:00 pm. Start your tour with a presentation on Christmas traditions in the Visitor Center and then cross the foot bridge to refreshments and caroling. Learn how food was prepared at the outdoor kitchen and then join your guide at the Great Hall for music and dancing. Cost of the tour is $10 for adults and $5 for children. Restaurant is open by reservation only. Cost for dinner and tour is $48 for adults and $24 for children. Stratford.

8 – Santa arrives in Reedville. 9:00 am. St. Nick arrives by boat at the dock of the Reedville Fishermen’s Museum.

8 – Santa arrives at the Richmond County Museum. 1-4 pm, photo with Santa, refreshments, gifts, and corner gift shop open. Warsaw.

8-9 – Annual Christmas on Cockrell’s Creek house tour and holiday event. Reedville Fishermen’s Museum.

8-9 - Holiday Open House. Celebrate the holidays with refreshments, tours, tastings, and special holiday wine. 10-5 Sat., 12-5 Sun. Ingleside 

14 – Holly Ball Exhibit – Kilmarnock Museum.

14 – Kilmarnock’s Annual Illuminated Christmas Parade.

14 – Colonial Beach House Tour.

15 – Christmas Open House. Come celebrate the season. Refreshments. Mary Ball Washington Museum. Lancaster.

15-16- Art open house. 11-5, poetry and music. Sunday - 3-5 pm. A-Ibanez Museum & Sunrise Studio gallery 

29 – Join in the celebration of the 12 days of Christmas. The Memorial House is decorated for Christmas, candlelit and filled with Colonial music. The plantation will be busy with demonstrations and activities performed by costumed interpreters. 9-6. George Washington Birthplace National Monument.

Remember to keep searching the Northern Neck MLS for your real estate needs.

As most of you know I use to be a commercial fisherman. Sometimes I take a break from Northern Neck real estate and work a few days on the water.

Some people find that crazy as working on the water is hard phsyical work but I find it to be relaxing.

In October the the associated press was watching use work. The VMRC patronmen carried then to certain boats where the crew asked questions.

In November their article started showing up papers across the country.

I was quoted in the article.

Here is that article taken from the Free Lance Star.

Part of Rappahannock open for oyster season

Date published: 11/22/2007 BY SONJA BARISICASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERON THE RAPPAHANNOCK RIVER–After five hours of seeking oysters in a section of a Chesapeake Bay tributary that has been off-limits until recently, Gerald Condrey was ready to call it a day.The commercial fisherman hadn't caught much, and his take was about to be reduced further.When a Virginia Marine Police boat happened by, he agreed to sell a couple bushels of the largest shellfish to the state–not for eating, not for cooking in traditional Thanksgiving stuffing, but for dumping back into the Rappahannock River."We're going to watch y'all drop them over on the reef," Marine Police Capt. Steve Pope called out as Condrey steered his workboat toward a marked sanctuary area in the river. There, Cordrey raised a tub and poured its gritty contents overboard.BAY'S OYSTER BOUNTY HAS DECLINED STEADILYThat simple action is part of a plan attempting to breed future generations of oysters that can stand up to the diseases that since the 1950s have devastated the bay's once-bountiful oyster population.It is being tried in tandem with a new scheme to rotate harvesting to different parts of the river each year so no one area is overworked. That has opened part of the lower Rappahannock to oystering this fall for the first time in more than 15 years.Condrey and other watermen, as commercial fishermen are known locally, are skeptical.They say the area should have been opened long ago and they blame years of management plans and regulations for the small amount of oysters they're encountering in the newly opened area–so meager they predict the oysters will run out before the season ends Nov. 30.They want to be allowed to harvest the entire river. "They need to open up where the oysters are," said Condrey.WATERMEN SAY THEY KNOW RIVER BESTWatermen argue that, like farm crops that grow better when fields are tilled and weeded, oysters will grow bigger and faster if they are harvested regularly from the river bottom."You should see the oysters that have died" because the state hasn't permitted them to be harvested, said oysterman Ken Smith of Heathsville, disgust in his voice. "You've heard of supply and demand? Let the watermen decide. They're not going to come out here and work if they're not going to make money."Jim Wesson, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission oyster scientist who designed the rotational harvest and buyback program, said the state is trying to make the most efficient use of what oysters are out there and that time is needed to see if this will work.Wesson also said he never expected watermen to find a windfall in the newly opened area, estimating a total yield of 3,000 bushels of oysters that are market-sized–at least 3 inches."That's the way oysters are right now," Wesson said. "There are no oysters in Virginia to speak of."OYSTERS A BIG PART OF VIRGINIA HISTORYAs food and as filters of pollutants in the water, oysters have been important to the ecology, economy and culture of the Chesapeake Bay for centuries.When Jamestown founder John Smith explored the bay in the early 1600s, he described in his journal oysters so abundant that they "lay thick as stones."Following the Civil War, thousands of unemployed men sought to make a living harvesting oysters on the bay. Both Virginia and Maryland established oyster navies to enforce boundaries and prevent poaching; there were border disputes between Maryland and Virginia watermen and even "oyster wars" between the state of Virginia and oyster dredgers.WATERMEN SAY OYSTERS REGULATED TOO MUCHAs recently as 1957, Virginia was producing 30 percent of the nation's oyster supply.Timmy Belvin of Gloucester has been a waterman since he was 12. He's now 49."Twenty years ago, you could come out here, you wouldn't come under 75 bushels a day," Belvin said. Now, he's barely catching his limit of eight bushels per day of market-sized oysters."There's too much regulations," Belvin said.With disease, as well as overharvesting and pollution, the native oyster population in the bay today is about 1 percent of its historic level, according to a recent report by a blue-ribbon panel of watermen, scientists, seafood merchants and VMRC members who spent about a year studying what Virginia had been doing to restore oysters. (Other states bordering the bay have made their own efforts to save the Chesapeake's oysters.)OYSTER HARVEST RULES ARE STRICT, SPECIFICFollowing a recommendation by the Virginia panel, VMRC approved reopening parts of the Rappahannock to harvest from Oct. 1 through Nov. 30. Under a three-year rotation, two areas of the river will be open every year.Watermen may use hand scrapes–old-fashioned rakes for scooping up the bivalves from the river bottom–from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays.They must cull oysters larger than 4 inches, either throwing them back into the water or selling up to three bushels of the larger oysters back to the state per day.The state pays $25 per bushel, or about $5 less per bushel than some watermen recently said they were getting paid for oysters they're selling to seafood houses. Wesson said the state likely will buy back no more than 1,000 bushels.Oysters the state buys are immediately placed on a reef in a sanctuary within the harvest area. Monitoring has shown that oysters in the closed areas were very large, meaning they are reaching 7 or 8 years of age, about twice the age when oysters in the bay typically die of disease. Scientists want to know if the large oysters may have developed resistance to disease that could be passed on to create sturdier subsequent generations.Improving enforcement is another goal of the blue-ribbon panel. In the past, it found, fines weren't enough to deter those intent on violating harvest rules.So, VMRC has established a zero-tolerance policy for oyster violations in state waters. A waterman must have a state license to work commercially, plus a special permit to harvest in the Rappahannock. A significant oyster violation now results in immediate confiscation of the permit; a waterman also faces a one-year suspension of his license for a first oyster offense and additional years for subsequent offenses.MARINE POLICE OFFICERS WILL PATROL THE RIVER Virginia has 77 Marine Police officers who patrol more than 5,100 miles of shoreline on the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. They conduct inspections, investigate accidents and conduct search and rescue missions. They bust illegal oyster-shucking and crab-picking operations, and even moonshiners.Pope, who leads the Marine Police station in Gloucester, said, "This is a great opportunity for the watermen to come out here and ply their trade and keep the tradition going."Watermen say they understand that the police are just doing their jobs but that does not mean they accept the regulations."I'd like to see the whole thing opened up so everyone can go to work and make a living and provide for their families," said Mike Croxton Jr., a 47-year-old oysterman from Kilmarnock who works the river with his son, Mike III, in his Chesapeake deadrise, the Tammy C."If you got a farm, you don't fence off one little section and put all your cows on it. They eat that grass all up."

October Events 

Farmers markets: Saturdays - May through October 

First Saturday – Irvington Farmers Market. 9-1 (through Dec) – 438-9088 

Second Saturday – Downtown Urbanna Farmers Market – 9-1 – 758-2000 

Third Saturday – RHHT Heathsville Farmers Market (April – October)– 580-3377 

1 - Skipjack cruise aboard the Claud W. Somers. 10-1. Reedville Fishermen’s Museum.  

3-31 – Archaeology month. A study of Rappahannock pottery. Richmond County Museum. Warsaw. 333-3607 

5 - First Friday Walkabout. Special celebration in historic Steptoe's District of Kilmarnock starting at 5:00pm. Sponsored by the Rappahannock Art League with a different theme highlighted each month. 

6 – Robert E. Lee 1807-2007: Celebration of an American Icon : Gary Gallagher speaks on Robert E. Lee as Stratford continues its year long celebration of the 200 th anniversary of his birth. Reservations.  

6 - Lottsburg Fall Festival. Fourth annual festival scheduled for October 6 between Allison's Ace Hardware and the Women's Club. Pumpking painting, Buzzie the clown, country music, food, vendors, lots of fun for the whole family.  

13 – 14 th Annual Northern Neck Seafood Extravaganza. Get the best seafood in the Chesapeake Bay area. Enjoy live music, tours, tastings, wine and gift specials. Reservations. 1-5. $45  

13 – Warsawfest. Crafts, rides, parade, food, vendors. Family fun on the grounds of RCC in Warsaw. 

15 - Skipjack cruise aboard the Claud W. Somers. 10-1. Reedville Fishermen’s Museum.  

20-21 – Striper Challenge. 1 st, 2nd places for each species. Rockfish, Trout (specks or grey). Northern Neck Anglers Club.  

20-21- Art open house. 11-5, poetry and music. Sunday - 3-5 pm. A-Ibanez Museum & Sunrise Studio gallery, map & location 

26 – Ghost Stories. On the grounds of the museum. Hot cider and other refreshments. Mary Ball Washington Museum.  

27 – Reedville’s Annual Halloween Event. Costume parade, haunted house, hayrides, children’s activities. 7-8:30 pm. Reedville Fishermen’s Museum.  

27 – Colonial Beach Golf Cart Halloween Parade. 224-8145 

29 - Skipjack cruise aboard the Claud W. Somers. 10-1. Reedville Fishermen’s Museum