Arlene, Elizabeth, and I strolled through the 1860's farm area and tried to figure out what each of the machines did. One was a tiller, another blocked up the clods left by the tiller. We saw the mowing machine - though we continued to wonder how it might work. While we were in the nether-reaches of the farm, we stumbled upon a little building with an outhouse next to it - and the outhouse had a worn patch in the grass in front of it, so I surmised it was in use. About that time, Arlene had made it to the door on the main building, and she was immediately sucked in by the teacher in her schoolhouse. The teacher promptly sat us down and gave us a lesson in recitations. (She also told us quite a bit about schools of the day - it was a one-room school for 20 students - with room for 12 by today's standards.) We learned to hold our feet straight or correctly skewed, and we held our McGuffy Readers with one hand or two, exactly as she perscribed. (She told that she didn't beat her students, but there weren't any students present to ask :-)) We read the passage a stanza at a time, first Arlene, then Elizabeth, then me, then the ladies, finally all of us together on the last stanza. The meandering trip out to the school house was certainly worth the walk!
We saw some irises and columbines on the walkway from the museum to the parking lot:
Here are the pictures from the brochure we picked up while we were there. You can see some of the old-timy farmers and one of the many rams we saw.
