Up in good time this morning. Wanted to drive over to Old Sturbridge Village today and knew that it would take at least an hour to get there. Left the trailer around 10:00 after a nice morning reading the comics and getting some breakfast.

    Spent nearly 6 hours wandering around the museum which is the 'Village'. Evidently someone with way to much money got into collecting antiques way back before the end of WWII and decided that since they didn't have a large enough estate to store them all on they would just buy some more property and build their own museum on it. Sounds very similar to others I have seen such as the Shurburge in Vermont and the Appalachian one down by Knoxville. Don't get me wrong now, I'm not complaining, it just seems like a lot of wealthy people around that same era had the same idea. It is nice that they managed to save so much of the old stuff, including whole buildings and such, and it is even nicer that they opened it up to the public.

   So Old Sturbridge is basically a museum that concentrates on how people worked lived and played during the first couple of hundred years here in the US. Spread out over many acres it has moved whole buildings in and set them up to show you how people would of farmed, made clothing or made and built every day items during that period. It is kind of neat because this particular place has lots of volunteers to come out in period costume and show you how a blacksmith might shoe a horse, or a house wife dye home spun yarn or make a candle or a broom. Lots of neat stuff to look at which is why 6 hours went by so quickly. If it hadn't been for missing lunch I might still be there.

    So that pretty much took care of the day for me. Got back to the trailer and have been relaxing a bit, my feet kind of hurt. Started in watching the rest of the old series 'Centennial' again. Am about half way through and it's fun to see some of the scenes of place I know back in Colorado. Of course I kind of object when they used part of the town of Blackhawk as a fill in for early Denver.

    Need to have a down day tomorrow in order to get some laundry done and do a few other things around the trailer. Next time I'm not getting a trailer with white linoleum as a floor. It's hard enough keeping it clean, it would be easier if it just didn't show the dirt so much.

    Oh, by the way.... it's raining again!

A day at Old Sturbridge Village.

One of the first things I saw was this nice team of horses pulling the local stage around the village green.

Hard to resist a face like that. All the kids got a kick out of hand feeding them hay from the barn.

Just so darn cute.

A lot of the wooden buildings there are some form of post and beam. This was one of the many barns on site that they used for various purposes. I just marvel at the 5 different pieces coming into the one upright post and knowing that each mortise and tenon was likely hand cut by some one.

These two ladies were dyeing home spun wool today using various types of organic and mineral bits and pieces. Today they were doing a really nice purple color using bark from a tree that grows in South America. It would of been quite common, even way back then, for that type of material to be available even to farmers way out in western Massachusetts.

One side of the printing shop. On the other side they were setting type for new menus for their on site cafe.

This contraption is used to grind up large batch's of apples in order to make hard apple cider, probably the main drink of that time after plain water. The large lever would of been attached to an oxen or horse and it would turn a wheel which in turn would turn a set of grinders in the body of the machine.

Here is the main power wheel for the lever on the last photo. The wooden teeth would mesh with another set of teeth on the actual grinding rollers. (see next photo's)

One half of the actual grinding rollers. These teeth would grind, chop and smash the whole apples into small bits called 'mash'. The guys working here today had done all of the grinding yesterday and then had left the apple mash in the collection trough over night to, as they put it, start to rot and gather in air borne yeast to start the fermentation process.

The other side of the rollers. I would not like to have my hand get stuck in this thing.

The guys were building up a pile of apple mash on the bed of the press by laying down a layer of mash and then a layer of rye straw on top of it and up each side. You can still see the wooden form board at the top of the pile, but that was only used to build a layer or two at a time. The rye straw was what held everything in place and kept the apple pulp from squeezing out when the press screws were applied.

Here you can see a layer of boards on top and the press screws brought down to where they are now applying pressure to the stack of apple pulp. Hard to believe that the only thing holding it all together was a bunch of straw.

Had to take a picture of this old 3-legged stool over in the milking barn because it reminded me of the one I use to watch my grandmother use when she was milking her cows. Hers didn't have the nifty little handle on the side though. My grandfather also had his own milking stool but it had only one leg. Harder to sit on if you weren't use to it, but easier to dodge a cow hoof if they got frisky... or so I've heard.

A nice split rail fence with the trees changing color in the background.

 

A set of bench's in the one room school. This one looks well used and came with a shelf and a writing surface built right into the bench in front.

A few of the very many pots in the pottery shed. The potter on duty today said that they could actually fire 500-600 pieces at a time in their outdoor brick kiln. Based on the fact that he managed to throw and finish a basic drinking glass in less than 10 min's while talking to a group of people, means it won't be long before they need to fire a bunch.

Baaaa! 

The village has 3 different types of mill using the water from the on site mill pond. Each one has it's own mill race and a different type of water wheel on each. There is a mill for carding wool, a standard grist mill for grinding grain and this sawmill.

This mill used a type of water wheel I had never seen before. Instead of an over or under shot wheel of a standard tub wheel this one has a large tube that the water flows into. From there it flows down and out through 5 or 6 enclosed curved vanes that turn and power the machinery above.

The working part of the mill. This one has a bed long enough to cut beams and boards nearly 80' long. They had it going while I was there and it would of cut the 8' long board from this log if they hadn't kept running it backwards to show how that part worked.

Nothing says farm to me as much as a few chickens running around.

This covered wooden bridge crosses the stream that feeds the mill pond.

The 'coopers' shop, the place where barrels and kegs were made. Just not today.