New Hampshire Farm Museum Field Trip (Aidan, Shaila, and Connor)

~New Hampshire Farm Museum Field Trip~

~Farm Museum by Aidan~

       Brandan, Shaila, Connor, Mom, and I all went to a New Hampshire farm museum where we learned about the time period around the civil war era. We started the tour by splitting up into groups. We learned that the farmhouse had been built by a man whose daughter was married to a smith. The fathers wedding gift was a small cape that was attached to the house. The smith turned it into a tavern, which was the only way traveling people got food and rest in that era. He painted it a tan color, which showed hungry and weary travelers who did not know how to read that the tavern was a place to rest and eat. Next to it was a sign with a red heart in the middle, and in the bottom left corner, a sign that showed the owner was a smith. A smith was a popular job. All of the founding fathers had been smiths.
     
       After this we were sent to different stations where we were to prepare food as it was prepared in the olden days. We were to skin and chop vegetables that would be roasted in a pan spread with olive oil. The children were handed skinning tools and a precariously long and dull knife. The vegetables were slowly but surely skinned and chopped, varying in size, but still ready to be roasted.

       In the end, we left to tour the farm. It was self guided, and we were to set out on a treasure hunt. We started with the barn tour, the barn echoing with the cries of people who had found various items. We also had to trip around an extremely long sled, which had been donated to the farm museum a while ago. It was almost as long as a 120 foot long barn, and also reached the breakneck speeds of 80 miles per hour, not your usual bob sled that children sled down hills covered with snow.

       After that we mounted a wagon hitched to the back of a small red tractor. We road to the pigpen to find a rather large and ugly pig. It had long been to large to eat, so she was meant to have piglets next spring. We then drove to a small building which was held up entirely with wooden pegs, not nails. It was the house of an apple pressing machine, and we learned about different apples pressed there. We learned that there were 7,500 different kinds of apples, all whose origins came from one small village. We then were shown how to pick apples using different techniques, and then left the barn, feeling a apple press machine on the way. It had a crank on it, which had used to be rough enough to cut your hand. But the rough metal had been rubbed so many times by hands cranking the machine that it felt smooth.
     
      We then set up for a feast! Everyone sat down and ate freshly made cornbread with hand churned butter ( the cornbread made from scratch by the visitors), roasted vegetables, (also made from scratch by students, fresh apple crisp (or more like apples with a special sauce over it, apples freshly picked from the farms orchard), which had been made on a tripod over a fire outside, and fresh apple cider (apples also picked from the farms orchard. After the feast we cleaned up, and left for home.
Aidan (Age 12)

~Farm Museum by Shaila~

Hey I am going to tell you about the farm museum!

So it all started when we went there it took a little while to get ready to go but we did it! So we went on the long relaxing trip. Well really I got a lot car sick! And I could not really read farmer boy which is our book we are reading for school. But finally we got there! And we all went into the yard they had there it was like a house owned by people. And there was a cow a fake one of course that we got to milk! Well really water came out and there was a pump were you could pump out water! And we had buckets to bring the water to the cow, And then there was a hole on the back of the cow I mean on its back, And we had to dump the water in there! And then the program began! And then she had her daughter there and her name was Betsy. And so she helped us! And our friends were there!
Shaila (Age 7)

~Farm Museum by Connor~

We left for our field  trip to the NH farm museum and  finally got there on time. Then I went over with Shaila and Aidan to milk the cow. There was a pump and a fake cow. First you pumped the pump,  and then you dumped the water into the cow and then milked the cow. The pump was running out of water and one of the udders kept popping  out, making a flood of water under the cow. Then we left there to  hear where we would be going.  First we were going to make roasted vegetables. The lady helping said to very carefully peel the vegetables. Then she pulled out a wet cutting board and a massive dull butchers knife but still super  dangerous . Parents  were ready to cut. They were wishing the knife wasn't so dull because they did not want to hurt themselves. Ready to tell the children to stand back, the lady said, “Oh, I thought maybe the children could use that knife to cut this squash and onions and potatoes.” The kids happily started cutting. Fingers slipping, the parents had to close  their eyes a couple of times. Then, after we were done, we did a barn treasure hunt. It was really fun, and it was a self-guided tour mostly for the kids. Than we did a tractor ride. It was really fun. We drove around the farm, and then we stopped at an apple orchard that had seven trees, and all the kids got in line. But this time they said that a parent should haul over the bucket and go pick the apples while the kids watched.  Then we went and fed a massive pig that they had, and they were going let it have piglets. Then we went to a place to learn about apple cider and stuff like that. Did you know that there are  7,500 types of named apples? The biggest apple on earth that they know of is called the 20 ounce apple, and like its name it is twenty ounces!!!!   After that we learned about different apple picking tools, and one of them was a massive toothed saw!!!!  The guide said all of the little kids could feel the top of it and said the parents did not need to. Then we were going to have a tour of the house, But there was not enough time to. But everybody else had made food, so we all ate what the five different groups made, and it was so fun. Then I played with my friend, and then we went home.  The End