After many years of the kindest of invitations from James Vanderpool, the Foundry Tree finally got to attend one of the Metal Museum’s Iron Pours!!!! F.I.R.E. 2025 felt like family. My kids and I enjoyed our first F.I.R.E. Conference. Many thanks to James Vanderpool for the invitation.
Many thanks to Alexandra Rose for setup assistance. My kids Ima and Ari helped with the Foundry Tree setup, patch sales, data entry, dinosaur and bird and bug discussions and packing up. They have their own blogs their nature observations on our journey. Ima’s posts are up on her blog Birdminded, and Ari’s Love of Bugs posts are forthcoming. We loved all the Mississippi Kites and learning from April Livingston, JR Lodico and David Lammers.
Many thanks to EVERYONE. My kids and I had an great trip driving to Memphis, TN from Chicago and back again.
JR Lodico, Gabe Akagawa, and Jake Brown. It had been well over a decade since I had seen these two!
Ima and Ari On the Mississippi River near the Metal Museum