Setting Up for a Video

One of my Texas Master Naturalist friends had asked me several months back if he could camp on our property sometime.  I said sure, and somehow it morphed into him bringing a friend, and making a video for his YouTube channel.  And then “sometime” became a firm date – this weekend.

Most of his videos are about dragonflies and vultures and walking stick insects, but this one is going to be more historical.  It’s going to demonstrate camping advice from a book that was written shortly after the Civil War, so he wants it to look like we’re in the 1890s.

So I have been running all around the farm today, trying to remove every obviously modern item that might get in a shot. I always thought it would be great fun to be a location scout for the movies, or to be in charge of continuity on the set, but this has been a lot more effort than I thought!

I’m leaving all the aluminum gates in place although they are not period-appropriate, but the Igloo dog house and scattered lawn chairs had to go.  In past years I had built some supports for squash and pole beans out of aluminum fence posts and PVC pipe, and I had to pull them out of the ground too.  And I had no idea how many bright plastic buckets and feed bins I had!  It’s all stuff I’ve been meaning to do anyway, but I was surprised at how much time it took to try to get it out of sight.  And, since it’s January, the farm doesn’t look that great anyway – lots of bare trees and dead weeds.

So we’ll see how it goes.  I am supposed to make a cameo appearance, as the farmer’s wife who allows some ramblers to stay on her property.  I thought about hanging a lot of my antique quilts on the line and making him film those, or going into a long explanation of natural dyeing, but it is his video, not mine, after all.  I am going to wear one of my antique sunbonnets – and maybe I’ll find a way to work the sheep in too!