This year’s Pioneer Crafts Festival is blending in some elements of the Arkansas Homesteading Conference. The following session will be available at no charge:
• 9 a.m. Making Herbal Teas, Tinctures and Salves with Cindy Faulk of C the Difference Boutique at Hot Springs. Faulk is a regular presenter with herb and Master Gardener groups across the state. She has a vast knowledge about cultivated and wild herbs for both culinary and health purposes.
• 10 a.m. Soap Making with Chayne and Ashley Besaw of Besaw Heritage Farm at Rison. The Besaws offer a line a handmade soaps, salves and other products, and they will also be demonstrating candle making at their booth at the festival.
• 11 a.m. Tanning Hides with Shona Jordan of Pike County. Shona and her husband, Robert, are true homesteaders, producing about 90 percent of their food from the garden and livestock they have on their homestead as well as what they gather through hunting and fishing. Shona, who is also a taxidermist, will demonstrate and discuss the process she goes through to convert an animal skin into a hide.
• Noon Backyard Poultry with Frankie Harper of Rison, organizer of the Backwoods Poultry Show. Harper has years of experience raising and showing poultry. In addition to hosting his own poultry show, he has also served as a poultry judge, including for the Arkansas State Fair. Harper will be going over which breeds of chickens are best for eggs, meat or both. He will also discuss the biosecurity measures flock owners can take to protect their birds from the Avian flu.
• 1 p.m. Building an Air-Pruning Garden Bed with Britt Talent, organizer of the Arkansas Homesteading Conference. This unique garden bed has open sides that allows air to penetrate into the bed to “prune” the roots of the plants inside, thereby yielding a more rigorous root system. His session will discuss a hybrid system that incorporates “hugelkultur” and lasagna gardening practices into the bed construction.
• 2 p.m. DIY high tunnel and rain barrel projects with David West, agriculture agent with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service office at Rison. West will go over the plans that were used to build the DIY high tunnel at the Pioneer Village as well as how to set up a rainwater collection system using barrels. There is a rainwater collection system set up at the Pioneer Village to demonstrate how it works.