'SERENITY BAMBOO'

Being that your on this page I guess your a little curious as to who the heck 'Serenity Bamboo' is. Our Bamboo Flute business consist of three people. Linda and Nick Barbadoro and Jim Ferere. The three of us grew up in the inner city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the 50's and 60's. Linda grew up in a section of the city called Olney. Jim and I grew up grew up in a section of Philly known as 'Swampoodle' where the old ball park, Connie Mack Stadium (previously Shibe Park), was located.

In the fall of 1974 Linda and I left Philly and moved to the town of Stockbridge (pop. 1865), located in the Beautiful Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. Jimmy joined us five years later and we've been here ever since. For all these many years we have earned our way making and selling our unique style of Dark Bamboo Flutes and Walking Stick Flutes at Juried Craft Fairs and Music Festivals throughout the Northeastern United States. We presently attend about 30 Craft Shows a year which puts us on the road for about 80 days a year.

We were the first to develop and sell our line of amazing Dark Bamboo Wood Walking Stick Flutes which have been featured in publications such as Signals Catalog, Real Goods and Backpackers Magazine.

We first began making Bamboo Wood Flutes in the fall of 1974 when friends of ours living in Stockbridge wanted to try and make some bamboo flutes. At that time I was playing my Concert Flute, a Gemienhart French model with low B foot, in an amateur town orchestra. I offered to help in tuning the flutes if they needed it. They did, one thing led to another, yada-yada-yada, and here we are 35 years later. Go figure!

The early years of our craft business consisted almost exclusively of working at craft shows which were held inside shopping malls. During the 70's and 80's mall craft shows were very popular. A typical mall show had anywhere between 75 to 150 craftspeople exhibiting their wares. You had to be juried into the show and could only sell what you made. Mall shows always started on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning and ended Sunday night. You were in the mall twelve hours a day, 10 to 10.

Actually the Kiosks you see today in malls are a direct off shoot of the mall craft shows. The idea of selling in the aisles.

Quite a few of us would park our vans in a back corner of the mall parking lot and camp there the entire time. Sometimes vendors would get together in the evening and have a pot luck dinner while hanging out in the parking lot. You basically lived at the mall for four or five days at a time. You washed in the mall, had breakfast and dinner in the mall and at night you slept in your van in their parking lot. What a life!

By the late 80's mall shows began to lose their novelty with the public and we were also getting pretty sick of doing them. We started phasing out the Mall shows and began attending more outdoor craft fairs and music festivals. Outdoor craft fairs usually run one or two days, usually over a weekend. The longest faire we attend is the 'Eastern States Exposition', better know around here as the 'Big E', held mid September in Springfield, Ma. It runs for 17 days 10 to 10 each day.

In August of 1979 we were blessed with the birth of our daughter Amelia Barbadoro. She was our 'little green bean' as one craftsman put it. The following month, September, we were booked to do Eastern States Exposition. In those days the Expo ran for 12 days and we used to stay on the grounds the entire time, sneaking into the Young Farmers of America dorms to take showers. We kept Lia under the table of our booth in a beautiful woven basket given to us by a friend. As we quickly learned, babies are very resilient. Lia spent her first years traveling with us to many craft shows and music festivals.

Lia still likes to remind us of the one thanksgiving dinner we spent in our van. It was the annual Jinx Harris Xmas Show held at the Northeast Trade Center in Worburn Massachusetts. Every vendor, there were usually over 200 of us, had to set up their booth on Thanksgiving day in order to be ready to open early the next morning, Black Friday. By the time we finished setting up our booth, the only place we could find open to get something to eat was a convenience store. It was a total junk food Thanksgiving but we still get a good laugh out of it.

We live on the same farm we moved to when we left Philly in 1974. Some things have certainly changed in our area since then but thankfully not too much around us. Our shop is in the basement of our home. We have a large vegetable garden and 300' of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries to get our yearly berry fix.

Well that's the 10 cent tour. I know I yada, yada'ed over 35 years of our past, but I'll save those stories for another time.

Be Well,

Your Friends at 'Serenity Bamboo'.