Union Mills Homestead

From the Farm Museum to Union Mills Homestead, the Danele Shipley Arena to the Carroll Arts Center, the historic village of Uniontown to the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Carroll County teems with activities for all ages and interests. Barbara Beverungen, manager of the Carroll County Office of Tourism, is the person responsible for promoting the county's tourist sites and activities, which the office publishes in an annual Calendar of Events. Hundreds of thousands of people are drawn year-round to events such as the Farm Museum's Fall Harvest Days and Maryland Wine Festival; Union Mills' Old-Fashioned Corn Roast; concerts, art exhibits and the Christmas Wreath Festival at the Arts Center; Common Ground on the Hill's two-day music and arts festival; fire department summer carnivals; a dozen strawberry festivals; municipal spring and fall fairs; and parks and recreational activities.

Get out the bathing suits and picnic baskets and prepare to mark the calendar, as the activities begin to pile up for the summer weeks ahead.This week marks the last week of school for students in Carroll County, so let me begin with a few wishes and reminders.To all graduates, I wish happiness and success in the future.To students who will return to Carroll County classrooms in August, have a safe and fun-filled summer.To their parents, keep smiling because summer vacation is not as long as it used to be. (The kids won't know the difference if you tell them they went to school longer last year)

On Saturday and Sunday, the Carroll County Farm Museum will sponsor Fall Harvest Days from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.It's a fun-filled weekend of fall activities. The entire family can enjoy scarecrow making, wagon rides, corn husking, demonstrations in apple butter making and butchering, and a continuous line of on-stage entertainment.Lots of country foods and crafts will be for sale.Admission is $4 for anyone over 12; $2 for those 60 and older; and under 12 is free.Information: 876-2667.If you have what you consider to be a pretty big pumpkin, you may want to enter the pumpkin contest during Fall Harvest Days.

Arts and crafts, rides, food from all over the world, games, a Civil War re-enactment, a parade, contests and music are among the things residents can enjoy tomorrow and Sunday at three major fall festivals around the county.The Silver Run/Union Mills Lions Club will open its 10th annual Fall Fest at 6 a.m. tomorrow with an old-fashioned buckwheat pancake breakfast at the Union Mills Homestead, 3311 Littlestown Pike. Breakfast will start at 7 a.m. Sunday and run to 10 a.m. both days, when lunch items will become available.

Love gardening but don't dig the pain? Although Earth Bud-Eze couldn't have known that politicians would repeal workplace rules aimed at curbing repetitive motion injuries, its line of ergonomically designed garden tools couldn't be better timed. Gardeners with -- or trying to avoid -- carpal tunnel syndrome will welcome them, as will those with chronic joint pain or inflammation, or reduced strength. Earth Bud-Eze's trowel, V-hoe and cultivator are designed to minimize stress on the user: with a flexible arm cuff and upright grip, each keeps the hand and wrist steady, forcing the stronger muscles of the upper arm and shoulder to do the work.

Next time you visit Piney Run Park, be sure to take along your camera and plenty of film: The fourth annual Piney Run photography contestis on.Get some good shots of a fisherman on the lake reeling in a big one. Catch the kids enjoying one of the many activities the park sponsors. Get a night shot from the pontoon boat. Photograph the sunrise through the cattails. Zoom in on the delicate petals of a wildflower.Photos must be taken within the park's boundaries and must have been shot between October 1990 and October 1991.

It will be 200 years next month since brothers Andrew and William Shriver began building a house and grist mill along Big Pipe Creek on Littlestown Pike.Their sixth- and seventh-generation descendants plan to mark the bicentennial of Union Mills Homestead with a yearlong celebration.The Union Mills Homestead Foundation will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. Wednesday to announce its bicentennial plans. The Carroll Commissioners and tennis champion Pam Shriver, the honorary chairwoman of the Union Mills bicentennial celebration, will attend.

APRIL April 24-30, Western Maryland Railway Museum: 41 N. Main St., Union Bridge. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays and 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays. Railroad memorabilia, archives and pictures. Other days by appointment. Museum, 410-775-0150. April 24-30, Year-Round 10-kilometer Volksmarch: Westminster Inn, 5 S. Center St., Westminster. 7 a.m. to three hours before dusk. John Baumgardner, 410-833-8916. April 24-30, Year-Round 10-kilometer Volksmarch: The Inn at Norwood, 7514 Norwood Ave., Sykesville.

The Union Mills Homestead gristmill is getting a dressing up for the May 6 opening of the 1797 Shriver family home.Yesterday morning, Robert Grassi arrived from Purling, N.Y., to "dress," or re-groove, the French Burr millstones that are used in the Homestead's gristmill to grind grains into flour."

No doubt you've heard about the three most important considerations when you're buying a house: location, location and location. They also serve quite handily as the three most important considerations in planning a wedding, too. Just about everything except your choice of spouse is determined by this most important detail -- the flowers, the colors, the style, the themes.So to assist in finding your quintessential, one-and-only, I-did-it-my-way sort of setting, we've compiled what you might think of as a real estate listing of area reception sites.