Selu Farm Fieldtrip

On Friday our History Book Club group went on a fieldtrip to a reconstructed 1930's farmhouse. The house is located on the original foundation and some of the original outbuildings are still there. It is only a few miles outside of the city of Radford and is run by Radford University. We went through each room of the house and in each area learned about different things from the 1930's. Station 1: The Living Room. In the Living Room the volunteer talked about how much of the cloth that was used for things like bedding and clothing came from left over feed sacks. She showed some old dresses and patterns as well as an old sewing machine. She talked about the straw tick mattress on the bed and the quilt. The little kids enjoyed the rocking chairs, the older girls liked feeling the different textures of the quilt fabrics (Clarissa is wearing the purple hat), and the boys...they were like, "When do we get to learn about boy stuff?" Just in time, we were informed that it was time to go to the corn patch and see the machinery.

Krystal and Amber holding hands on their walk to the corn patch.

Station 2: Corn Patch. This was great. Not only did the guide keep asking the kids applicable math questions, he let them really get their hands dirty, so to speak. We learned many interesting things about corn that we didn't know before and even got to plant some corn. When the kids noticed that there wasn't a horse to pull the planting machine, Jared and his friend Connor promptly volunteered to be the horses. I think this station helped Jared be even more excited about his corn plants at home that are already starting to break ground.

Station 3: The Beekeeper. On the front porch the beekeeper taught us many exciting new things about bees and the how's and why's of keeping them. We learned that the females do all the work outside the hive and that the drones do not have stingers and get killed when they are done mating. We learned about why they use smokers on bees and how to find a bee tree in the wild. The kids especially enjoyed seeing a queen bee up close. It was fascinating and we could have listened for much longer than 20 minutes.

Station 4: The Parlor. A 1930's parlor was used mainly for guests and entertaining. It was closed off from the rest of the house and kept neat and clean. This parlor had many musical instruments including an old pump organ. Jared entertained us all by playing "Yankee Doodle" with his hands and pumping with his feet. We were also lucky enough to have two of the volunteers play a piece on the guitar and banjo that was original to this area and performed by the Carter family band. Speaking of the banjo, we learned that it originated from African Americans, a fact that none of us knew before. Finally they turned on an old Victrola. I must say, we've come a long way in sound quality since then.

Station 5: Upstairs. Next we went upstairs to the girls room and saw more quilts. In the boys room we looked at the construction of the siding for the house.

Station 6: Corn Shelling on the Back Porch. This was a big hit with the kids. They each got their own cob of dried feed corn to shell. They discovered it was much easier to use the machine than to do it by hand.

Then they ground the corn in the grinder.

Clarissa decided to take a break and try out the swing while everyone else was grinding corn. I couldn't resist the photo op.

After everyone else was done with the corn, Amber was still going strong.

Station 7: Botany Walk. In the front yard, the kids enjoyed looking into the deep hole that was the old cistern. Then we learned about some of the native plants in the area. Jared was brave enough to eat a ramp, a really strong bulb that is smellier than garlic or onions. The favorite by far was the American Black Walnut. It was well past lunch time by the time we got to this station and the kids just kept asking the guy to crack open more and more walnuts.

Station 8: The Kitchen. I guess they saved the best for last. It was so neat to see the old stove and cabinet that they had in there. Unfortunately, it was Amber's nap time and she fell asleep on me so I wasn't able to get any pictures. Again, there were more math questions as they figured out that to haul enough water that a family of today uses, Jared would have had to bring in 100 buckets of water from the cistern around to the kitchen. That put things into perspective. I think I could've stayed in that kitchen forever, it was so simple and quaint, if I just could've found a spot for my Kitchenaid. But alas, the time came to leave and return to the modern world. At least the volunteers offered that we could come back anytime to get a dose of the 1930's if ever life got too hectic.

Lest anyone think that Chris got out of all this old-fashioned fun, he spent his Saturday morning slaughtering a cow. We went in with a friend and bought half a cow for the beef and part of the deal was that they do the killing, skinning, gutting etc. before they take it to the meat processor.