~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)
Shaila (Age 7)
