Nov 2007 HABA Houston Area Blacksmith's Association

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November 10-11, 2007

Armand Bayou Nature Center

Martyn Farm Fall Festival
Armand Bayou Nature Center’s (ABNC) Martyn Farm Fall Festival celebrates a period of Texas history some refer to as “the good ole days”. This Festival shares a glimpse of life on the Texas Gulf Coast year during the late 1800s to early 1900s. Fall Festival will recreate the sights, sounds and color of 1900’s Texas Gulf Coast farm life with music, food, arts and crafts, farm animals, wagon rides, canoeing and games common during the 1900s.

HABA demonstrated at the ABNC Farm on Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (setup at 8 a.m.) Les Cook is our crew chief and welcomes you to stop by and visit or help out. Any one interested can email or call him at H-281-481-2457 or C-281-450-6441. His report follows....

HABA flew its banner again at Armand Bayou’s Fall Festival over the Veterans Day weekend, Nov 10 and 11. Tee Hines, Steve Arial, Steve Blankenship and Les Cook hammered on Sat. With Larry Newman set up in his usual spot, there were five smiths at work. It made for a great show of smoke and forging. Lee Oates and his wife stopped by and visited for quite awhile. Andrew Belcher and some of his friends took in the sights and visited us. Tom Scarsella did his wood working across the way from us. I think he was hunting the upwind side of blacksmith alley.

We had a fair day except for the humidity and the rain that Tee brings with him whenever he comes to ABNC. Despite the showers, there were a fair number of people, young and old, pass by and check us out. Tee even signed one up.

The four of us hammered at whatever interested us. Steve B. forged a number of knives from RR spikes and of course that raised a lot of interest with the boys. Steve B. forged hooks, fajita turner and leaves. For the life of me, I do not remember what Tee was doing but he kept busy talking, hammering, and keeping his really nice show and tell items protected from the showers. Actually he made horse heads, nails, and leaves.

Sunday it was just Steve A. and Les. Somewhere between Sat and Sun Steve A. saw that as my coffee got cold I’d stick a piece of hot stock in it to warm it up as there was no microwave available. Steve forged out a neat little mulling iron for himself. Later on Ed Malmgren stopped by with his grandson.

The pics show a little of what was going on around us. You can see “Blacksmiths Alley”. Well that’s what I choose to call it. Since we had successfully made fire, we had a request to make fire for an enactor who was making hoecakes. The pictures of Dave’s bottle bling and Les’s candle holder are of the items that HABA donated to ABNC’s raffle. There were a lot of antique tractors on display and on both days there was a parade of a number of them. They are amazing machines and the engine sounds brought back old memories. The farm has a small sugar cane field. Cane was hand cut and pressed using horses to power the press. These same teams were used to perform many other farm chores. One job was to move timber around by skidding and loading onto a wagon.

There was a lot of activity all weekend. All in all, I think ABNC had a good event and HABA flew its colors well.

blacksmith's coffee heater	Dave's bottle bling	fire starters for ho' cakes
Here we are	items made over the weekend	Les' candle holder
Lots o' smiths	Steve B	Tee,Steve, & Steve by Les

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