As we’re reminded every Memorial Day, FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.

So on this hallowed day, we invite you to mark your calendars to celebrate Independence Day this year with your friends from Magnalia and Mount Jubilee! On Saturday night, July 3, meet us at Magnalia Homestead & Farm in Stokesdale — the future home to The Jubilee Barn.

In addition to a spectacular fireworks show (called “the best east of the Mississippi” by partial observers), there will be:

• food trucks
• patriotic music
• colonial games
• a photo booth
• U.S. history presentations in Semper Fi Hall
• hayrides
• kids crafts
• a bounce house
• magic shows
• animals of various kinds
• big screen entertainment (as it gets dark)
• and more!

Best of all, proceeds from food and beverage purchases as well as tips for various activities go toward the materials budget for The Jubilee Barn, which will help facilitate “agri-therapy” for the day program participants served through Mount Jubilee Ministries — and will help cover costs associated with five special meal events in 2021-22 that will be served to veterans in Magnalia’s Semper Fi Hall. (We’ll be sure to share pictures on this blog of barn progress, and those magical meals.)

We’ll send an event invitation next month so you can reserve your free tickets, and let your friends know! We plan to limit attendance this year to 300 people.

Godspeed to you and yours!

Jim, Rachel & the Magnalia Team

P.S. Historian Edith Hamilton once wrote of Ancient Greece: “When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free, and was never free again.”