This schedule is still subject to change, please check back!
30-40 minute presentations with 5-10 minute Q&A
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A Culture of Healing— Meeting the Challenges of Disability in the Context of Community
37a Lifetime member of Homestead Heritage and home-schooling mother of an autistic child shares her experiences and explores how an integrated community life can bring wholeness, meaning and healing to special-needs children—and to us all.
Schedule: Saturday at 10:00
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A Day in the Life of a Home-schooling Family
21 Explore how to make family life a classroom with Amanda Lancaster, home-schooling mother of seven. Take a look at the “nuts and bolts” of home-schooling using the unique, Bible-based curriculum published by the Homestead community. Discover how home-schooling and “learning to learn” are an integral part of our community life.
Schedule: Saturday at 3:00
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Basic Soap Making
19 Discover how to create creamy homemade soap in your own kitchen. We will introduce the basics of soap making with a few simple ingredients.
Schedule: Sunday at 2:00 • Saturday at 2:00
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Beekeeping Seminar
3 A seminar on the need for keeping bees as an essential part of a homestead, as a source for both honey and pollination.
Schedule: Sunday at 2:00 • Saturday at 2:00
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Bread Making
19 An inspiring seminar on the ease of baking bread from whole grains-in your own kitchen, using utensils and ingredients you already have.
Schedule: Saturday at 10:00
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Building a Child’s Character
37b A discussion of the interfacing relationship between education and child rearing, home-schooling mother and advisor Amanda Lancaster shares practical advice on how to use the “windows” of opportunity in a child’s learning and development to build their character as well as to teach academic skills. She will include a brief presentation on how to use the Building Christian Character curriculum for both child training and education.
Schedule: Saturday at 2:00
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Changing Our Minds – The Impact of Digital Technology
37b Each year there is an exponential increase in the availability of digital technology. We will share research on how these technologies are changing the way people think and radically altering our relationship with nature, with reality and with each other. In considering the effects of these unprecedented changes, we will share some of the ways our community has re-envisioned our relationship with technology and the benefits we have gained from this approach.
Schedule: Saturday at 10:00
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Cheese Making Seminar — Mozzarella
19 Watch a gallon of milk become mozzarella in this one-hour session as you learn what it takes to make your own soft and hard cheeses at home, with either cow or goat milk.
Schedule: Sunday at 1:00 • Saturday at 1:00
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Collecting and Storing Water for the Small Homestead
3 An introduction to sustainable water essentials for the homestead and small farm with an emphasis on collecting bulk water, rainwater catchment, water storage and water delivery. Topics will include calculating the water needs of the homestead and how to determine available rainwater according to specific locations.
Schedule: Saturday at 4:00
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Cultures in Conflict – A Scriptural and Historical Survey
37a This seminar will explore a foundational element of the worldview that has birthed and sustained the Homestead Heritage community—the vision of the “kingdom of God” as a unique culture, distinct from all the kingdoms of this world. Through a look at the historical context of original Christianity and an examination of Scripture, a challenge emerges for today’s believers to become a radically alternative culture—a “city set on a hill.”
Schedule: Saturday at 12:00
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Getting Started with Chickens – Part 1 Basics
19 Chickens are easy, enjoyable and rewarding to raise and can provide farm fresh eggs for you and your family right from your own yard. I’ll go over the basics of what you’ll need to know in order to start raising and caring for your first flock. If you’ve never raised chickens before, this seminar is a good place place to start. The presentation will last about 25 minutes, followed with time for questions and answers about raising poultry.
Schedule: Saturday at 4:00
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Getting Started with Chickens – Part 2 Housing and Equipment
19 To start raising chickens, you’ll need housing for them and a few pieces of equipment. There are many different sizes and styles of chicken housing, which can make it difficult to choose. I’ll go over the choices and considerations involved in order to help you know what will be a good fit for your flock and land. We’ll also discuss equipment and other structures, including feeders, waterers and nest boxes.
Schedule: Saturday at 5:00
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Hand Milking – Farm Experience
11 Have you ever wanted to hand milk a dairy cow? Join us each morning during the Fair to learn “hands-on” how to hand milk and what it takes to care for a family milk cow. Highlights • The Basics of Dairy Cows • Feeding a Dairy Cow and Calf • The Basic Procedures of Hand Milking • Milking Parlor and Equipment Needs • Sanitation, Handling and Storage
Schedule: Saturday at 7:00
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In Times of Shaking – Cultivating Hope in an Age of Upheaval
37b Amidst global crises of unprecedented proportions, many have expressed a sense of helplessness and uncertainty as to what meaningful impact they, as individuals, can realistically hope to make. This seminar takes a brief look at some of the most cataclysmic upheavals in human history and how ordinary people responded with extraordinary measures. What can we learn from these examples? If change were possible, where might it begin, and what would be required of those willing to commit themselves to the kind of radical alternative necessary to bring it to pass?
Schedule: Saturday at 3:00
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Industrialism and the Question of Sustainability
37b Beginning with the banking revolution of the early 1700’s, this seminar reviews the major historic developments of the modern industrial era. It will then present steps that everyone can take to achieve a practical, sustainable alternative model.
Schedule: Saturday at 12:00
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Keynote Address – A Call to Exodus
37b An Alternative Vision for the Church in These Times Many glibly accept postmodern culture as if it were not a new and unproven experiment. In this experiment, children are the subjects, and isolation, despair and suicide are a few of the tragic side-effects. Do these troubling times call for radical solutions? For millennia, Christianity has been a frontier movement, answering such crises with new steps in the long journey toward freedom. Four hundred years ago this month, Christian Pilgrims landed on the shores of America, having left behind Europe’s urban cultures to establish a new society where they could live and raise their children according to their conscience. Is it time for a twenty-first-century exodus in Christianity—not to the shores of a natural homeland, but to an alternative culture of wholeness and life to build a refuge of hope amid surrounding chaos?
Schedule: Saturday at 11:00
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Left, Right or Upward
37a In a country sometimes called “the Christian nation,” what should be the role of believers in politics? Do they have any real choice but to simply vote for “the lesser of two evils”? What does it mean to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”? Since the New Testament seems to endorse political government as being “ordained by God,” should believers seek to hold governmental office? This seminar will address these questions and more as we explore the proper relationship of Christians to the State.
Schedule: Saturday at 3:00
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Nonviolence: A Challenge to Today’s Christianity
37a The Homestead community traces its spiritual roots back to the heavily persecuted, yet nonviolent and peace-loving, Anabaptist movement begun in the 1500’s. What is the perspective that has caused these reformers to tenaciously reject all forms of violence for over 500 years, and how might this perspective be still relevant today? Drawn mainly from Blair Adams’s book, Nonviolence: A Challenge to Today’s Christianity, this seminar will discuss how and why the issues of violence and nonviolence still present crucial questions for the serious Christian—questions that ultimately reach to the core of the Christian faith.
Schedule: Saturday at 1:00
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Purifying Water Using Sustainable Methods
3 This seminar continues the introduction to sustainable water essentials with an emphasis on water purification. Methods covered include the slow sand filter, ozonation powered by solar energy, boiling, distillation and pasteurization.
Schedule: Saturday at 5:00
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Questions & Answers on Christian Community
37b Join members of the Homestead Heritage community for a highly interactive question-and-answer session about their way of life. This open forum will be hosted by a diverse and cross-generational panel featuring long-time members of the community as well as those who have just recently joined. Bring your questions!
Schedule: Saturday at 4:00
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Seed Sustainability, Food Waste and Air to Water
19 The importance of open pollinated seed, how to save seed, what we can do with food waste, and getting irrigation and clean drinking water from the air.
Schedule: Sunday at 12:00 • Saturday at 12:00
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Sourdough Bread Making
19 Come learn the simple steps you can take to bake sourdough bread from your own kitchen with your own utensils and ingredients.
Schedule: Sunday at 11:00 • Saturday at 11:00
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Sustainable Gardening & Soil Restoration
3 An introduction to producing your own healthy food in your own backyard or on your own farm, naturally and sustainably.
Schedule: Saturday at 10:00
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Unplugging from the Matrix – Can We Solve the Social Dilemma
37a Drawn largely from a series of books written by Homestead community founder Blair Adams, this seminar will explore how a postmodern, consumer culture focused on entertainment and technology has contributed to an unprecedented shift in human values, relationships and ways of thinking. Is there any escape from the pulls of such a culture with its endless promises and enticements? Is such an escape even necessary?
Schedule: Saturday at 2:00
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What Do I Do – Beginning a Family Homestead
3 Given the current socioeconomic upheaval in our country, you may be seriously considering how you can provide a more stable food supply and lifestyle for your family. However, you many not know what to do and where to begin. Two homesteaders share key insights from their many years of experience that may help you successfully begin a small family homestead.
Schedule: Saturday at 11:00
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Wisdom’s Children – The Necessity and Possibility of Home Education
37b Never in the past 100 years have so many Americans entertained home education as a viable option—even as a necessity. Should you do it? Can you do it? In this seminar, lifelong home-schooled parents unpack home education from a Biblical worldview, examining the distinctive goals of Christian education and the necessity of proper context to achieve those goals. We will also address ten common arguments against home-schooling.
Schedule: Saturday at 1:00