The McFaddin-Ward House

Historic House Museum in Beaumont, Texas

Sister, don't give up the land. They are not making land anymore.
W.P.H. McFaddin

McFaddin-Ward House Featured on Road Trippin’

The McFaddin-Ward House Museum was recently featured on “Road Trippin’,” a show produced by local television station, KFDM Channel 6.

Hosted by Brian Glenn, the segment focused on the museum’s tours and events. The museum is open for tours Tuesday through Saturday and offers a free first-floor tour on Sundays. For more information and to schedule a tour, contact the museum’s reservation desk at (409) 832-2134.

View the video here and click on “The Spotlight” under the “Thursday’s Road Trippin'” icon.

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Viewpoints Wins First Place at Press Club Awards Banquet

We are thrilled to announce that our quarterly newsletter, Viewpoints, won first place in the Press Club of Southeast Texas 2013 Excellence in Media contest!

Viewpoints is a collaboration of articles and photos by our staff highlighting the cultural and educational aspects of the museum. Have a look at our recent issue!

The Press Club’s annual Excellence in Media contest recognizes the best work in each journalism genre through judging by experts in media from across the United States. Works published, aired or produced and released in 2012 were eligible for entry. There were hundreds of entries submitted by local journalists, broadcasters and public relations experts competing for honors. We would like to congratulate all of this year’s honorees!

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Teaching Sustainable Living to the Next Generation

By Carol Cuccio

Read the full June 2013 issue of Viewpoints.

In the last issue of Viewpoints, we mentioned some of the recent physical changes made to the Victory Garden. We are pleased to announce changes to the garden’s programming as well. The museum’s “Green Thumbs” program, which started in 2009 and was developed to educate six- to twelve-year-olds about nature, conservation, and organic gardening, will be evolving into a new activity with an expanded scope, mission, and target audience.

Community gardening has risen in popularity throughout the United States since the Victory Garden’s beginnings, and a few gardens have even been started locally. Interest has increased in the ways food affects health and the environment, causing a shift in thinking and values regarding the quality of food available. More and more people are demanding to know where food comes from, who grew it, and how it was grown. Thankfully, during this time as well, the Beaumont Farmers Market got its start, offering Southeast Texans a variety of options in fresh and sustainably grown food. The McFaddin-Ward House collaborated with the market, teaching gardening techniques during market days and inviting volunteers to get involved with the Victory Garden.

With the shift in food tastes and ideals, McFaddin-Ward House staff began thinking about the past—of course—that’s what we do at a history museum. We saw the current trend harking back to a time when our parents and grandparents, and the McFaddins, lived more sustainable, simple lives. They knew how to grow their own, and make their own, causing—in a time before they knew the terminology—their carbon footprint to be much smaller than ours is today. For many now, eating food that has been grown in unnatural habitats, kept alive with antibiotics, artificial hormones, and chemical applications, and trucked in from miles away, is unsettling and unsustainable, and they are throwing up their hands, or shovels, in protest.

This trend led us to rethink the Victory Garden’s outreach programming. In recent months, more and more people have approached us to get tips on starting backyard gardens and on switching from chemical to organic agriculture. So we feel that the timing is ripe for a new program. In June, “Roots and Shoots: Teaching Sustainable Living to the Next Generation” will begin. It’s open to everyone; participants are invited to bring a picnic and dine al fresco on specified days on the carriage house lawn, while they learn traditional recipes and gardening techniques that may have been lost over time. “Roots and Shoots” will teach participants how to start organic backyard gardens, how to cook healthy and nutritious meals with homegrown produce, and how to make common household products (such as laundry detergents and toothpaste), to become less reliant on store-bought, plastic-packaged goods. We encourage families who take part to enjoy an outdoor meal together and learn ways to incorporate family time into food production, by either starting a garden or simply cooking a meal together.

For more details on the project, stay tuned to our website for updates or contact ccuccio@mcfaddin-ward.org. E-mail updates and announcements on planned events will be sent in the coming weeks.

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Feeding the Soul: The Victory Garden gets a Facelift, New Focus

By Carol Cuccio

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.
~Alfred Austin

The museum’s Victory Garden has been undergoing an overhaul during the last few months, and we are very excited about what will be “cropping up” as spring approaches. From expanding the garden beds to installing new features, the project is shaping up into something bigger and better.

Many of you may remember the Victory Garden during its humble beginnings back in the spring of 2009. We installed four “lasagna”-style raised beds, a gardening technique where a framework is built and compostable materials are layered, much like the ingredients in an actual, edible lasagna. In this specialized gardening method, layers are placed directly on top of sod, soil or, in some cases, cement; the idea is not to dig down into the earth, but to build up, creating a nutrient-dense environment that will grow produce organically, making it ideal for those without gardening tools or for the elderly.

Our original beds were made by layering newspaper on top of the grassy area in front of the curatorial office building, in the very spot where Ida McFaddin kept chickens and a milk cow. We knew the soil would be fertile there, and we loved the idea of returning the ground to its traditional agricultural roots.

We used a frame of landscaping timbers and layered materials like peat, hummus, garden soil, and compost to make our 10” deep raised beds. Since we began the program, we have facilitated many children’s garden activities, used the area as an educational teaching resource during events like our Preservation Celebration, and grown everything from herbs to towering “mammoth” sunflowers.

Going into our fourth year with our Victory Garden, we decided it was time to give the beds a facelift and rethink our focus. Tying in with this year’s theme, Tried and True: Traditions of a Southeast Texas Family, and gearing up for next year’s theme, which will center on food ways, our garden programming will have a culinary focus. We plan to teach not only how to grow your own but also how to cook your own, and involve family in meal planning and preparation as well.

The new garden will include pathways throughout, an updated compost generation system, an arbor, a park bench, and a birdbath. With our organic practices already in place, we have seen a vast improvement in the biodiversity found in this small patch of earth; and we look forward to seeing what those improvements will bring this spring. To get involved with our victory garden project, contact Carol Cuccio at (409) 832-1906 or ccuccio@mcfaddin-ward.org.

Read the full March 2013 issue of Viewpoints.