By By KEVIN SCOTT CUTLER
Lifestyles & Features Editor
BATH — The first “mini-festival” of the summer season will be held this weekend at the Historic Bath State Historic Site.
Part of a statewide Second Saturdays effort, the event will be a celebration of history and the arts.
Saturday’s festivities run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., said Leigh Swain, Historic Bath site manager.
“There will be historical and art components,” Swain said. “We’ve been thinking about what sort of things go along with this weekend’s agricultural-based program.”
Swain, who said she well remembers her childhood experiences of working in tobacco fields, is basing much of the program around farm life in Beaufort County.
“Lots of times on a farm, people made their own furniture and baskets. They had to be as self-sufficient as possible,” she said. “The activities we’re planning will be a good match.”
Area residents have agreed to pitch in and assist Historic Bath site staff in presenting the program.
“Sam Taylor will be here with his tobacco stick art and footstools, and Petals &Produce will be selling jams, produce and flowers,” Swain said. “Billy and Martha Baynor of Bil-Mar Dogpatch Honey will have their honey and beeswax candles and ornaments, and Helen Brooks will sell her pottery, which is functional and pretty in its simplicity.”
Also slated to participate this weekend is Linda Poore, who paints designs on goose and ostrich eggs. Bath basket-maker Jean Bowen plans to showcase her craft, and young Hyde County painter Richard Mann will display and sell prints of his artwork depicting wildlife and country scenes. Rounding out the day will be an exhibit of farm implements of yesteryear, provided by members of the Eastern Antique Power Association, Swain added.
“I’m just so proud that our area has so many talented people,” Swain said.
Hands-on activities will include harvesting crops from the historic Van der Veer House gardens, and youngsters will be invited to try potato stamping, Swain said. There will be pedal tractor races for children, and Dennis and Karen Modlin will perform throughout the day’s events.
The program is a partnership between the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources and the N.C. Arts Council. The Second Saturdays events will continue in July and August.
One lucky attendee Saturday will win a year’s subscription to Our State magazine, Swain added.
“The magazine is one of the sponsors for the Second Saturdays program, and we will have complimentary copies of Our State for the early arrivals,” she said. “They’ll also be doing a survey on the experience during the day, and they’ll have a drawing for a free subscription.”
The show will go on regardless of the weather, Swain told the Daily News.
“There is no rain date for this,” she said. “We’ll do it come rain or shine, short of a hurricane!”
For more information about the Second Saturdays series of programs, call the Historic Bath Visitors Center at 252-923-3971.