Weekend Fun: Salt Fest

55°f/14°C, clear and sunny again. Corn is up!

Since Saturday dawned clear, crisp, and no humidity, we decided on a road trip to Eastern Kanawha County, which is a very large county just south of us, and home to our state Capitol. There is a unique small industry there---J.Q. Dickinson Salt Works. They were having their annual salt festival, with music, crafts, all the usual festival stuff, but we're also offering tours of the salt works and museum. A quick call to my friend Suzy and she was happy to join us for the day. Since the loss of her brother John, she has been having a hard time, so we thought an outing would do her good.

This festival, in its fifth year, is quite small, which is just perfect for me as I do not enjoy huge events, just find them exhausting and repetitive. There was a small stage and I was delighted to see my friends Kim Johnson and Bobby Taylor onstage, playing their excellent old-time music. Both are among the top musicians in our state.

There was a really nice dining hall, where the salt works hosts farm-to-table dinners. Food choices seemed limited, however, to polish sausages, pepperoni rolls and the like, although I did find a Saigon cinnamon roll that was very good, a bit more spicy than the norm, and thankfully no icing. Drinks were offered too, everything from lemonade to sodas to beer, wine, and cocktails. Suzy and I tried a lavender-blueberry lemonade made with vodka that was surprisingly delicious.

As for the tours, those seemed a bit unorganized. The main store clerk told us that we would have to walk "back there" with a vague wave of the hand, and to look for signs for the tour and the times. We set off, and managed to find "back there", which wasn't very far. A shuttle took us to the museum and surrounding grounds, which were just lovely.

We were delighted to find a formal garden being restored.

I had no idea what this flower was, but it turned out to be a very unusual type of peony. Stunning!

Wild geraniums seemed quite at home.

Some of the roses looked a bit rough, perhaps having been let go and now being coaxed back to health. The salt works and grounds were unused for years, only restored about 10 years ago, I think.

I could have spent more time in that pretty garden, but the museum beckoned.

Picture of the original salt works, on the banks of the Kanawha River.

 

The Dickinson family didn't throw out much! There is much memorabilia,  and totescfull of old documents still to be sorted and catalogued. These shelves hold small wood replicas of the historic village of Malden, where the salt works is located.

This building was the central office for the works, and still has the original furniture and flooring. The floor is laid at a diagonal, and is wuite beautiful. 

A by-product of salt making was pharmaceuticals,  such as brombromide.

One of the barns on the property. 

And another barn, this one housing a few head of cattle.

Same barn, different angle.

We chose to skip the tour of the saltmaking process because the tour was so crowded we couldn't hear the guide. Larry and I toured it before,  so you can read about it here.  I wrote a pretty extensive post then, with many photos. It really is fascinating. Suzy was getting tired by this point, and the heat when we went inside the first greenhouse-like building really bothered all of us. 

I missed out on buying some salt, as the store was quite crowded, but we will go back another day. The salt is surprisingly delicious, with a very distinct taste.

We left the festival in early afternoon to continue on to the next part of our road trip: waterfalls. More about that in my next post. I will leave you today with a tiny clip of Kim and Bobby's music. It's not quite their usual fast paced style, but nice anyway. I can't recall the name of the young man singing.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.