Read more...

Back by enthusiastic request, this popular workshop will get you organized and in the holiday mood quickly. Call your friends and make your reservation as soon as possible by contacting the Museum at 802-843-2111. Because each session is limited to 10 participants, pre-payment is required to secure a reservation. Mail your check to The Nature Museum, PO Box 38, Grafton, VT 05146, or call the Museum to charge to your credit card. Choose one of four sessions:

November 5, Friday 9:30-11:00 AM, 1:00-2:30 PM, 7:30-9:00 PM
November 6, Saturday, 9:30-11:00 AM.

The fee of $30 per wreath includes an abundant and varied supply of natural materials collected and selected for their artistic appeal. Enjoy creativity and camaraderie as you embellish a fresh, pre-made evergreen wreath measuring about 22" across to suit your tastes and special location. We'll have bows, ribbons, glue guns, all sorts of materials, and some treats to eat - basically everything you need to make your session festive and productive. All we need is you!

Download the 2010 Wreath Making Workshop flier.

Wreath Sale

For those too busy to decorate their own wreath, the Museum is again offering for sale beautiful wreaths made by our long-time provider. If you order ahead by November 10 (click here to see the order form), you can make sure you get the style, size, and color bow you want. You can mail you order to the Museum, email to staff@nature-museum.org, or call the Museum to place an order at 802-843-2111. You may mail your check or use your charge card by calling the Museum. You'll be able to pick up your wreaths before Thanksgiving.

There are still a few beautifully decorated evergreen wreaths at a reduced bargain price of $10 each for sale on the front porch of the Museum.  They would make a lovely statement for your front door or a marvelous present for someone special.  Call the Museum at 802-843-2111 for information or hours the Museum will be open on Thursday December 23.  The Museum will be closed on December 24 and 25.

Download the order form here.

The Pale Blue Dot brought close to 500 people to Grafton on Memorial Day weekend 2010 to experience a first-time Museum event named after late astronomer Carl Sagan's description of the Earth upon his seeing a photograph of the planet taken from outer space by the crew of Voyager 1. Increasing signs of global ecological distress led the Museum Board and staff to consider new ways to engage people to think about their relationship to the natural world and its resources.

The Pale Blue Dot was developed to appeal to a wide variety of ages and interests by offering a variety of presentations and experiences in which one might have an AHA moment: an awakening of each person's connection to the Earth and a sense of empowerment to make a difference. A clear example of this was the tremendous response and action the Grafton Elementary fifth grade students had to the Plastic Tumbleweed project.

>>>WATCH a slideshow of people and events...

Friday Night's Events

Friday night's Big Bang celebration in the lovely Craven barn in Grafton -- enhanced by good music, food, and entertainment -- featured an informal address by Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder of Vermont's Seventh Generation. Hollender's personal passion for responsible action toward the environment is reflected in Seventh Generation's products and company policies. His plea for the early teaching of systematic thinking to be applied broadly throughout life was powerful. His perception and articulation of the big picture was compelling to many in the audience as he urged individuals, corporations, and countries to act systematically upon their responsible beliefs now to protect the world we know. An auction of four premier packages of adventure, gardening, Boston excursion, and Cape Cod getaway drew enthusiastic response and garnered money for the Museum's educational programs.

Saturday's Events

Saturday saw a full day of presentations, activities, and entertainment centered around the earth's resources and how we interact with them. A series of talks aimed at adults by leaders in the field of architecture, permaculture, locavore food, and Vermont's landscape and economics featured prominent speakers.

• John Bramley, "Can Vermont's Landscape Work and for Whom?"
• John Connell, "Your New Home: Green, Custom and Factory-Built"
• Amy Cotler, "The Locavore Way"
• David Jacke, "Eden Arising: Ecological Design and the Inner Landscape"
• Don McCormick, "Integrating Renewable Energy, Food, and Fuel Systems," Carbon Harvest Energy, Brattleboro

In addition, there were healthy ethnic foods by local vendors, world music by Trei Arcusi, and many new exhibits at The Nature Museum on the theme of "Endings and Origins." A finale parade featuring Bread and Puppet Theater and marching musicians, including the New Orleans Brass Band Project of Southern Vermont, with rhythm by The Junkman and his recent junksters, encouraged scores of attendees to join the surge around Grafton in celebration of the Earth.

Plastic Tumbleweeds

Throughout it all, winding in the field behind the Museum, around the ball field, and over to Main Street was a line of 2,663 plastic grocery bags, which had been collected and tied in a continuous line by students at Grafton Elementary School to signify the number of plastic bags used each second across the nation.

The visual impact was supplemented by PowerPoint presentations the students had researched and created outlining the negative effects of plastic bags. Inspired by their research, students designed their own reusable bags for people to purchase. In addition, they presented a bill to the Vermont legislature to ban the sale and use of plastic bags throughout Vermont. If this bill were adopted, Vermont would become the first state in the nation to take that step.

The students' activism produced a positive, tangible result that had been inspired by the Pale Blue Dot. These young people researched the facts surrounding plastic bags and, armed with this knowledge, went into action to make a difference. Kudos to all the Grafton Elementary School students who participated and the adult educators and volunteers who supported their efforts!

Thank You!

Thank you to all the professionals who presented programs; to the sponsors and donors who provided the funding for tents and other costs; to generous individuals and companies that donated items for the auction; and to the many volunteers, artists, and contributors who made the two days of events possible. We could not have accomplished this wonderful event without their help. We are grateful to everyone who supported our efforts and made the Pale Blue Dot such a success.

See the complete list of contributors.

Hundreds of children and adults braved newly repaired roads, a miserable weekend weather forecast, occasional rain showers and a surprising amount of mud (all of which was actually a lot better than what had been forecasted), as well as a looming array of necessary work in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, in order to enjoy a unique and totally therapeutic adventure at the Museum's Third Vermont Fairy House Tour on September 24 and 25, 2011.

Twenty-eight very different structures or villages dotted the trailsides in the Village Park behind the Museum. After viewing them closely, visitors returned to the Museum and its garden.

Inside the Museum, in addition to regular exhibits and special hands-on activities, The Agate House by Sue Hadden of the Vermont Museum of Mining and Minerals captured the viewers' eyes with a sedately lovely house and chimney created from slabs and buttons of different kinds of agate. Also displayed nearby for unimpeded close inspection were two of her fairy houses from earlier tours: the Grafton Amethyst Mine and the Lapidary.

Outside in the garden, youngsters blew giant bubbles, enjoyed readings from fairy books, or decorated wreaths and wands with flowers, shells, and fairy dust. Participants also built their own imaginative structures from especially gathered materials or just had a grand time watching others of all ages working together to create something special and being so very thoughtful, deliberate, frugal, and careful about the materials they chose for their work.

By the end of the second day of the tour, at least 108 incredibly different structures had been created in the Museum garden out of a vast selection of natural materials! A birthday celebration even featured a fairy house birthday cake for one happy young man and his friends who had completed their houses!

See the fantastic slideshows of the formal tour entries and spontaneous structures. We hope they'll inspire you to want to do a formal entry yourself next year.

Thank you to our event supporters!

• Underwriter - Windham Foundation
• Sustaining Sponsors - Cota & Cota, Inc., and Tania Evans
• Supporting Sponsors - Chester Hardware, MJS Lawn Care & Lawnscape, Inc., Salmon and Nostrand Attorneys at Law, and TD Bank

Thank you also to additional event donors!

• Finn & Stone Insurance in Springfield,
• Knockout Carpet in Chester,
• Merchants Bank in Bellows Falls,
• Morning Star Perennials in Rockingham,
• Newtown Business/Snow & Lear in Bellows Falls,
• The Richards Group in Ludlow

Special thanks to the Windham Foundation for parking and other facilities, to Decker's Tent Rentals for a discount on the tent rental, and to NewsBank, Inc., for printing the event's color posters and program booklet.

If you weren't able to attend this year's event, we hope you will mark next year's calendar for September 29 and 30 so you can get ready for Fairy House Tour 2012!

Read more about What is a Fairy House?, Last Year's Event, and Entrants and Participants. See previous years Tour Slideshows. Thank you to our 2010 Sponsors.

Well over 500 people of all ages came to Grafton to see what professional artists and enthusiasts had created along the trail in the Village Park behind The Nature Museum.

Fairy Houses are marvelous catalysts that do much more than just provide fun and healthy entertainment. They can do all this:

• encourage children and adults to enjoy the outdoors,
• support No Child Left Inside to combat nature-deficit disorder,
• foster intergenerational communication,
• promote literacy (download a special reading list from our website),
• stimulate interest in science and place-based education through nature observation,
• provide hands-on involvement,
• stimulate use of imagination and artistic expression through construction of a place to attract a wee creature - fairy, pixie, brownie, elf, sprite, gnome, or their friends.

We invite you to enter the world of wee wonders. Once your eyes are opened, no walk in the woods, along streets, or in someone's yard will ever be the same. Fairy houses and their possibilities are everywhere!

Well over 500 people of all ages came to Grafton to see what professional artists and enthusiasts had created along the trail in the Village Park behind The Nature Museum. People came from Boston, MA; Troy, NY; Keene, NH; and more. They loved the new "houses" on exhibit; the crafts; the wafting bubbles children stretched to catch; the opportunity to speak with Tracy Kane, hear her read, and have her autograph her books. They loved the amazingly inspirational materials they could use to build their own houses in the Museum's gardens and also - because some could not stand to see an inviting empty spot - even along the trail in the park. Thirty people cared enough to return on Sunday to do it all over again!

The official tour entries this year numbered thirty-one and thematically ranged from the more spiritual "Now" or "The House of Belonging" to the abstract "Sculpture Garden" to the imaginative Fairy Wildlife Sanctuary, where bees soared in the air, to The Quilt House, where small children could actually have nestled inside, to a steel flower house, to the fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs, to a school, art studio, ice cream party, Fairyland, whole fairy villages and individual charming houses, the Grafton Soapstone Quarry (pleading for strong wee folk workers), the intriguing Fairy Conversion Chamber and Recovery Zone, and more.

The details were imaginative and exquisite. We invite you to look at the pictures closely and especially check out the tiny elements in...

• A Fairy Autumn Harvest
• Woodland Art Studio
• Fairy Playspace
• Fairy Library (did you ever see such an inviting library where you could even eat!)
• Fall Fairy Fair (could you see the Ferris wheel?)
• Fairy Woodworking Studio
• Birches Fairy Village (did you find the frying pan on the stove or the ceiling fan?)
• Tweedle Weed School of Dance (Did you see the tiny acorn bucket and reflecting water in the stone well?)

Graceful natural materials abounded in...

• Baederwood
• Welcome Home
• Chamber's Community
• Hideaway Beech Resort
• The Fairy Nursery
• Fairy Swimming Pools.

Did you examine all the details in the Fairy Lapidary, where jewels and minerals would be fashioned into works of beauty? That more lasting exhibit - fashioned entirely of stone, minerals, and gems - is going to another museum for permanent display. It's always so amazing that entries with a broad general theme and common guidelines can end up being so entirely different.

The separate list of the 31 featured exhibits and their participants gives the specific entry titles, creators, and/or entering organizations. Those entries are identified and numbered for reference in the pictures from the 2010 tour. Click here to see those pictures and also unnumbered photos of structures created by participants on the tour days, as well as pictures of people generally enjoying themselves. For the days were magical. Tracy Kane's big bubble machine had children dancing and trying to catch the fleeting, floating orbs. Festive picnics abounded. The weather was fantastic, and the scene was one of creativity and joy from tiny tots to grandparents.

For the success of this event, we are most grateful to our sponsors: Underwriters Anne and Tom Grape (second year of support, this year increased!), Sustaining Supporter (for the second year!) Cota & Cota, and Donors Salmon and Nostrand Attorneys at Law (second year of support!) and new supporter Barrett and Valley Associates, Inc. We also appreciate contributions from the Davis Insurance Agency and Art and Sue Greenbaum. Our funders and amazing in-kind supporters - the Old Tavern at Grafton (accommodations for Tracy and Barry Kane), the Windham Foundation (parking and other facilities help), and NewsBank of Chester for printing all of our posters and programs - helped us keep our expenses as low as possible to benefit the Museum's educational programs and exhibits.

Thanks go to all the supporters, exhibitors, volunteers, and visitors who made the 2010 tour such a success.

2011 Fairy House Tour

Entrants and Participants

More Fun at the Fairy House Tour

2010 Fairy House Tour

Entrants and Participants

View larger images

More fun at the 2010 Fairy House Tour

View larger images

2009 Fairy Houses