shuffle off to Sheffield

(piles of clay!)
So, as I say, went to buy a few hundred pounds of clay at Sheffield Pottery in western Mass. yesterday, a few hundred miles round trip. I buy clay from them and they have a sizeable gallery and sell my work there too, which is a really nice circle.
It is a family business, and the family lives on site. In the back is a huge clay deposit which they dig from the ground (see pile, above). Then it get dumped into the first mixer here (next picture) which takes it into the building where the clay is chopped and mixed and prepared just right. They also sell lotsa tools and books and potter's toys. Good trip, and listened to an abundance of Van Halen and now I am home.
It is interesting to drive past country dudes sitting on their front porches in the morning, smoking the cigarette and drinking the beers, and several hours later you see the same dude on the same porch still smoking and drinking. This is a favorite past-time, I think, in rural New York. More fun for me was the car full of young people ahead of me on the thruway who were using sign language for awhile to tell me something important. I followed in their merry wake for quite awhile, but I am not in the habit of going 85 mph so away they went.