Fall on the Farm

The season kind, not the other . . . though in our group we did have a kid on crutches, one in an arm cast, another with a glued shut forehead from a gash, and another who had some sort of sweet breathing mask contraption to help with allergies on the farm. All boys, I might add, lol!

A couple years ago, our neighbor and her kids attended a special weekend at a 130-year-old farm, which (once a year) opens up to the community and lets families learn about life in that era. Our neighbor had so much fun with her kids, that this year when the opportunity arose, we decided to sign up :)

It turned out Buck was able to get the day off, so we joined probably 50 other homeschoolers and got ready for our tour. We saw loads of other homeschool families from our community there too--I bet it was 50/50 public school kids via bus and homeschool kids via minivan :) The homeschool leaders each had a sheet of activities we were assigned to . . . thus we didn't get to see every "station" on the farm, but every so often Buck or I would step out of the group and go check out something that caught our fancy. For him, it was the saw mill. For me, the tiny, tiny house the family lived in when they first settled . . . before they added all the amazing "technology" of the late 1800s :) But honestly, there's no way we could have seen/experienced it all. We were exhausted when we got home; IDK how some of those little kiddos kept up with all that activity. I bet there were several mamas with happy nappers on the drive home!

So for our rotations--the kids got to help with rope making and laundry washing (I got to touch real lye soap for the first time, very interesting!). We visited the fancy chicken house/loom that was quite advanced for its time--it was also the only loom in the area, so the wife of the farmer traded all her rugs for her neighbors' goods. The lady currently running the loom said it was priceless, yet she still makes rugs on it. Caelan and our neighbor girl were fascinated and stayed behind to ask more questions. We may have to add another building to our backyard farm ;)





Let's see the kids dug potatoes and got to eat fresh chips made right there on the spot! A tractor with an old, old potato soil turning mechanism would cut through the earth, raining potatoes. The kids would bucket them and haul them to a waiting cart (our older kids recognized how "convenient" this was for those who had done the planting ;) The cart took the gathered spuds to a trailer connected to a giant tank of water with a spray nozzle. The potatoes got a good scrub, then were taken in buckets over to a man who ran them through--what used to be a hand crank--slicer (now powered by an ever-running drill). Then the sliced potatoes moved into a gigantic fryer, where more volunteers dipped them to a sizzle, before carrying them over to the ladies who had big covered pans brimming with fresh potato chips. Somehow, Buck got the ladies to give him potato chips BEFORE he dug potatoes. Seems like he's always getting some extra love from the grandmas ;) I benefitted too, because I too got to chip early, and I never did dig a potato. In fact, the ladies scooped up a paper basket full for every single person at the farm!! You don't get much fresher than that :) All of it was open-air, just a few tables and some carts set out next to the field.




We took a break for lunch, which we had packed earlier in the morning. Van picnic it is! Afterwards, we decided to go back to rope-making barn to check out the roosters, ducks, and chickens we'd not gotten much time to visit before. Buck ended up striking up a conversation with the old, old farmer who owned all those birds. Apparently, nearly a dozen of them are grand champion show chickens! The fellow gave us all kinds of tips on tending birds; it's fun getting educated by experience (though I do enjoy the book side of learning too :)

Our homeschool group reconvened at the corn maze--which I was concerned would take a really long time, but I think Caelan (who was the oldest homeschooled person in our crowd) had the map, and she might have discovered a short cut :) Let's see, oh, then we went to the bee keeping station . . . Buck has decided this would be an excellent thing to add to our *farm,* possibly next year :) They certainly made it look complicated though . . . the lady running that station said the owner of the bees had 15 55-gallon drums full of honey from this year's crop . . . 600 lbs. per drum! Can you imagine that much honey? Wowza!!



After the bees, we went to the butter-making station. Our kids have done this before, but the girls were good about helping out the little ones. Our boys were excited that they got to use an egg beater like the one we have from Great Grandma B ... except the one at the farm still had its handle cover, so it was slightly more comfortable to use :) We took a short tour of the farm house (it is all open this weekend to the public, but they limited the tour for school kid day due to lack of time--which I might add was announced via steam engine tractor/train whistle, so we could hear when it was station-switch time no matter where we were on the farm!)




We went on the cow/horse barn tour next . . . I didn't realize the double walls were to keep the horses from kicking through to the outside. I always thought they were to stuff corn/grain inside for insulation in the winter and for convenient food storage. I guess maybe that was the secondary and not the primary reason for that false inner wall.

Buck and I both felt like we learned a bunch on this trip! It was neat to have people who knew what they were talking about, sharing that knowledge with the kids. We have noticed at other experiences, sometimes living history reenactors get a little snooty about recreating their historical role, but these volunteers (many who were part of the original family) were friendly and glad to answer questions from the children (and their curious parents :).




Goodness, what else? We learned about the cob house, the ice house, and the outhouse . . . the lady at this station described the Sears & Roebuck catalogue as "Amazon . com in a book." Ha! She also explained the reason so many large leaf plants grew around the outhouse (think t.p.) and that sometimes corn cobs were used for wiping?! What?

She told a story about how her grandfather, the oldest of a giant family, had to hoard his catalogue pages and corn cobs from his younger brothers and sisters who *used too much.* She said, "Same problems, different time; nothing changes." Ha! So funny :) She did mention that she's a nurse; she certainly knew a lot about number two . . . Oh, and she also (not sure how it fit in with the other things) gave us a history on lightning rods.

She had an antique family example of such a rod with the glass globe unexploded; very cool! She said it was like a text message to the farmer (Buck suggested weather app :) If the farm family saw the globe had exploded, they knew the outbuilding was struck by lightning. Since there was no rural fire service, the farmer would start checking his buildings for any fire potential, hopefully saving his buildings and livestock.

Our last station was the threshing machine. That was cool to see in action! The fellow giving that presentation had the kids rub some wheat heads between their hands to remove the kernels (which they were invited to eat). He explained how the first round of invention was a guy with a stick who beat the grain from the stalk; then this . . . and they fired up the threshing machine :) Afterwards, the kids got to grab handfuls of the wheat kernel from the bin and they munched on those as we were walking back towards the main part of the farm. So many cool things to do!



Our historic farm experience ended with scoops of homemade ice cream formed inside giant wooden drums. The homeschool crowd literally sold those folks out of their ice cream :) They're going to need to coordinate with the butter making ladies to see if they can borrow some cream for the weekend. Oh, I forgot, the butter ladies gave all the kids a sample of the butter they made on a saltine cracker (and let Buck take two--he didn't even make butter! :)


Weather-wise it was gorgeous! The kids definitely had some issues with allergies afterwards, and today, but it was worth the fun of all that learning. I mean . . . school Tuesday and Wednesday; Thursday a trip to see fancy jewelry at a museum; Friday homeschool day at the farm; Saturday . . . well today they're taking care of all the chores they didn't get done on the other days, but overall a pretty successful and fun first week of school. Oh yeah! And they got a motorcycle . . .