Massachusetts Day 4

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

The weather cleared up gloriously so we went to Old Sturbridge Village, a recreation of a New England village from 1790-1840. We had planned to go the day before, which would have been a special events day, but ultimately were grateful to have gone on a regular day because we were literally almost the only people there. We could walk wherever we wanted, feel the way a small village with low population would have felt, and talk at length to the living historian actors.

Arrived after the hour-long drive

I wish we had these enclosed pews in our parishes nowadays!

The preacher actor offered to play the antique organ and, after he played, John told him correctly, "That was Beethoven's 9th Symphony!"

The general store

The cemetery

The horse-drawn carriage

The one-room school house

The ceramics shop

The ceramics actor was an encouraging man: he asked right away if our children were homeschooled, to which I answered 'yes' and he gave his approval. He talked at length about all the practical skills children of that earlier era would have learned that our children don't learn today, what a loss that is--plus they were more literate in America at that time than they are today. I'm told that President Abraham Lincoln himself only attended school through the fifth grade, so something sure is wrong today when we are pouring so much money into schooling that is failing in numerous ways. There was a humorous moment when this man was listing the many skills children would have learned and he mentioned rendering one's own lard: John and I piped up that we had rendered lard just last week, to which the man burst out laughing with delight.

Eating brown bag lunches

Exploring in the woods

A farm woman cooking

The farmer who was threshing dried peas was also wonderful to talk to. He offered to teach our children how to thresh, which surprised us because it's a rather large and dangerous wooden stick used for the process. So I asked him what chores children would have been doing by six-years-old at that time. He answered, "Almost everything on the farm!" The day would have begun with the child hauling 12 buckets of water from the well, just for the morning's needs as he would have had to haul more water in the afternoon. He would have fed all the farm animals and milked the cows. Children would have been doing a lot of food preparation for Mama ("go shuck this corn and this bowl of pea pods"). I asked when girls would have learned to sew, to which he asked the age of my Mary: "Four-and-a-half." "Oh, she would already have been sewing and knitting" (and here I don't even allow my six-year-old to hold the knitting needles because 'they are dangerous'). Plus children would have been attending school (in addition to all the hours of chores) by first grade!

I think my children do a fair number of chores, a list that is continually growing. Talking to this farmer actor certainly helped me to rid myself of any guilt about the chores and inspired me to allow my children to reach more of their full potential with even more!

Peas dried and ready to thresh

Being instructed

Threshing the peas

A lane of apple trees

Would the sheep rather eat pizza?

Or apples?

The blacksmith actor was charming and encouraged all the children to learn how to hammer the anvil as apprentices would have done. The two mamas were rather nervous to watch sledgehammers being given to our boys and we herded the littler ones out of the way!

The blacksmith actor showing that he is making nails

The town pond

We ran into the blacksmith later and he invited each child to play a game of tic tac toe with him using sticks in the dirt

The day was an absolute success, if tiring in a good sort of way. The children behaved very well in the aggregate, which is saying a lot considering how fatiguing it is to walk that much for hours and to sit in the car there and back. The only downside to these sort of big adventures is that the children get to pass out from exhaustion on the drive home, but Mama never does!

In the evening, we met my aunt and uncle for dinner at a wonderful restaurant. We hadn't seen them since our wedding almost eight years ago--just a few things have changed! (And a fun coincidence we had not realized is that the restaurant we chose was literally two blocks around the corner from the house in which I was born nearly four decades ago!)

Children pretty grubby after a great dinner with Uncle T. and Aunt M.

We dropped off Chris and his luggage at a hotel in Andover for the purpose of this whole trip: he had two days of business meetings to attend.