A couple years ago we went camping at Champoeg Park and I picked up a park brochure on our way home. I was surprised to see that they hold numerous events throughout the year; one of them was a farmstead day and one was an apple cider festival. They both sounded like fun for the kids, but each year as the date approached we always had something else going on. This year I marked my calendar well in advance, and this morning we headed down for some pioneering fun!
There were a whole bunch of stations set up, each depicting an aspect of pioneer life 160 years ago when Champoeg was first settled. The first place we went was a table with a bunch of games that the pioneer kids would play with. There wasn't a single video game in the bunch! ;) Instead, there was a game that involved just two sticks and a wooden ring. I bet it would be hard to market to today's technology obsessed kids, but it was actually really fun. To get the ring to shoot up into the air, you would cross your wooden sticks and stick them through the ring:
Then you would quickly move the sticks apart and the ring would go flying towards the other person, who tried to catch it with their two sticks.
We all agreed that we should definitely look for the supplies to make a set for our family, its the perfect backyard game and is easy enough for younger kids while still being challenging enough for older ones.
The next area was a dress up area where we learned about the kinds of clothing that pioneer children wore and why. For example, the girls usually only had one dress and it was expected to last them for a long time. So the top portion was often big and loose so they could fit into it for a few years, and the skirt part had many hems that could be let out to make the dress longer as she grew. Since girls were supposed to keep the dress in good enough shape to pass down, they also had to wear aprons to cover the dress anytime they were going to be doing something messy. And they wore such large bonnets to keep the sun off their faces because in those days being suntanned was considered to be very un beautiful! After we learned all about their clothes, the kids got a chance to try some on. I thought they looked so adorable...they would have made great looking pioneer kids!
And if those kids did end up getting their clothes dirty, of course they would have to be washed, so we went to learn about that next. Killian and Rowan each picked out a towel, grabbed some soap and went to work scrubbing like crazy on the washboard:
I can't imagine having to wash clothes like that...no wonder they wanted the kids to stay as clean as possible! They rinsed their towels, hung them up to dry and we were off to the next station. Next to the barn they got to try out this awesome little contraption for taking the kernels off of a dried ear of corn:
After the kernels were all cut off, the machine flipped the cob back up so it would come out of that little chute on the side. They both made sure to grab their kernel-less corn cob so we could take it home, although I am not sure what they plan on doing with them! Next up was grinding wheat between two stones. If this had been your job back in that day, I can only imagine the muscles one would build up - it was hard work! It becomes obvious rather quickly why nobody needed to 'work out' in those days. Just doing day to day chores was enough to keep you in tip top shape!
Next we went and took a seat in the barn for a wheat threshing demonstration. The guy also gave us a little history lesson, about how the farmers would gather, dry and thresh their wheat. We learned that the preferred method of threshing was filling the barn a few feet deep with wheat stalks and bringing in a bunch of horses to run around and trample it, thereby separating the wheat kernels from the stalk. Ingenious! Since we didn't have a herd of horses handy, they called up volunteers from the audience to stomp the wheat, and Killian was one of them:
We wandered out into the field when the demonstration was over, and watched for a few minutes as this beautiful Shire draft horse was readied for pulling an old cart around. Draft horses are probably my favorite breed of horse, I love their enormous size and their gentle nature. I think a lot of people are scared by them, but they actually have a reputation as being some of the sweetest horses you can work with. There was a draft horse named Fitzgerald at the horse barn I used to work at, and he was the nicest one of the bunch, a real gentle giant.
The last area to explore was the tools and woodworking area. In hindsight, we should have done this section as soon as we got there, because we ended up waiting in some really long lines. There were some cool things to do though - like use a huge two person saw to cut off a round of log:
The kids also drilled a hole into a piece of wood with an old fashion hand drill, and chopped a shingle of wood off a stump with a wood mallet. But the best was making their own nails! They got to help the 'blacksmith' by turning a handle to fan the fire while he got the nail hot, and then they pounded on the hot nail to make a head on it.
The finished product!
We took another walk through the kitchen garden, which was just beautiful. They were growing all sorts of things, from decorative flowers, to squashes and tomatoes, hops and they even had a tobacco plant! On the other side of the garden was something the kids could really get excited about...the very un-pioneer treat of root beer floats. They each got one and settled down to eat while we listed to a band play some old time folk music.
The kids not only had a lot of fun, but also learned a lot about early pioneer life. They have been making all sorts of comparisons about the different lifestyles, and seem to have a new appreciation of how different life is nowadays ("its easy mom, cause we can just go to the store to buy flour instead of growing it and grinding it ourselves")! At the same time, it was fun for them to see how some things that are modernized can easily still be done at home, like making butter and hanging your clothes out to dry. A lot of the forgotten ways are coming back into 'style' and I think its a good thing, especially for the kids. The new way isn't always the better way!
There were a whole bunch of stations set up, each depicting an aspect of pioneer life 160 years ago when Champoeg was first settled. The first place we went was a table with a bunch of games that the pioneer kids would play with. There wasn't a single video game in the bunch! ;) Instead, there was a game that involved just two sticks and a wooden ring. I bet it would be hard to market to today's technology obsessed kids, but it was actually really fun. To get the ring to shoot up into the air, you would cross your wooden sticks and stick them through the ring:
Then you would quickly move the sticks apart and the ring would go flying towards the other person, who tried to catch it with their two sticks.
We all agreed that we should definitely look for the supplies to make a set for our family, its the perfect backyard game and is easy enough for younger kids while still being challenging enough for older ones.
The next area was a dress up area where we learned about the kinds of clothing that pioneer children wore and why. For example, the girls usually only had one dress and it was expected to last them for a long time. So the top portion was often big and loose so they could fit into it for a few years, and the skirt part had many hems that could be let out to make the dress longer as she grew. Since girls were supposed to keep the dress in good enough shape to pass down, they also had to wear aprons to cover the dress anytime they were going to be doing something messy. And they wore such large bonnets to keep the sun off their faces because in those days being suntanned was considered to be very un beautiful! After we learned all about their clothes, the kids got a chance to try some on. I thought they looked so adorable...they would have made great looking pioneer kids!
And if those kids did end up getting their clothes dirty, of course they would have to be washed, so we went to learn about that next. Killian and Rowan each picked out a towel, grabbed some soap and went to work scrubbing like crazy on the washboard:
I can't imagine having to wash clothes like that...no wonder they wanted the kids to stay as clean as possible! They rinsed their towels, hung them up to dry and we were off to the next station. Next to the barn they got to try out this awesome little contraption for taking the kernels off of a dried ear of corn:
After the kernels were all cut off, the machine flipped the cob back up so it would come out of that little chute on the side. They both made sure to grab their kernel-less corn cob so we could take it home, although I am not sure what they plan on doing with them! Next up was grinding wheat between two stones. If this had been your job back in that day, I can only imagine the muscles one would build up - it was hard work! It becomes obvious rather quickly why nobody needed to 'work out' in those days. Just doing day to day chores was enough to keep you in tip top shape!
Next we went and took a seat in the barn for a wheat threshing demonstration. The guy also gave us a little history lesson, about how the farmers would gather, dry and thresh their wheat. We learned that the preferred method of threshing was filling the barn a few feet deep with wheat stalks and bringing in a bunch of horses to run around and trample it, thereby separating the wheat kernels from the stalk. Ingenious! Since we didn't have a herd of horses handy, they called up volunteers from the audience to stomp the wheat, and Killian was one of them:
We wandered out into the field when the demonstration was over, and watched for a few minutes as this beautiful Shire draft horse was readied for pulling an old cart around. Draft horses are probably my favorite breed of horse, I love their enormous size and their gentle nature. I think a lot of people are scared by them, but they actually have a reputation as being some of the sweetest horses you can work with. There was a draft horse named Fitzgerald at the horse barn I used to work at, and he was the nicest one of the bunch, a real gentle giant.
The last area to explore was the tools and woodworking area. In hindsight, we should have done this section as soon as we got there, because we ended up waiting in some really long lines. There were some cool things to do though - like use a huge two person saw to cut off a round of log:
The kids also drilled a hole into a piece of wood with an old fashion hand drill, and chopped a shingle of wood off a stump with a wood mallet. But the best was making their own nails! They got to help the 'blacksmith' by turning a handle to fan the fire while he got the nail hot, and then they pounded on the hot nail to make a head on it.
The finished product!
We took another walk through the kitchen garden, which was just beautiful. They were growing all sorts of things, from decorative flowers, to squashes and tomatoes, hops and they even had a tobacco plant! On the other side of the garden was something the kids could really get excited about...the very un-pioneer treat of root beer floats. They each got one and settled down to eat while we listed to a band play some old time folk music.
The kids not only had a lot of fun, but also learned a lot about early pioneer life. They have been making all sorts of comparisons about the different lifestyles, and seem to have a new appreciation of how different life is nowadays ("its easy mom, cause we can just go to the store to buy flour instead of growing it and grinding it ourselves")! At the same time, it was fun for them to see how some things that are modernized can easily still be done at home, like making butter and hanging your clothes out to dry. A lot of the forgotten ways are coming back into 'style' and I think its a good thing, especially for the kids. The new way isn't always the better way!