Frontier Museum

This is a neat living museum not far from us. It shows the frontier life from various countries, with period actors sharing information and demonstrations. The buildings are all original to both the country and time period they represent. Most of the homes are from the late 1600's and early 1700's. The American homestead area is being renovated but had homes and buildings from the 1800's. All the homes are furnished with period furniture and accessories. It was a beautiful day and we went because it was sheep shearing time and this tied in great with one of the books we were doing in school.

The shearing took place in England. They had both the american sheep and the traditional Cotswold sheep from England. It was amazing how the sheep just hung out while being clipped.

The girls got to participate in the cleaning , carding and dyeing of the freshly sheared wool.

We also got to see how they spun the wool into thread and then wove it on a loom into fabric.

On the Irish homestead they were demonstrating how Flax is turned into a fine thread for making linen cloth. It is very labor intensive. The girls got to try their hand at it.

They also had some traditional Irish music being played indoors.

Of course there were many animals to see, much to the delight of Aaron. The lambs were very fun to watch and very playful.

The German homestead had an assortment of very colorful roosters and chickens.

The Cotswold sheep from England

The Iron Smith's shop. He was fun and informative and showed us how to make several of the needed items of the period. It was hard to get some good pictures due to the smoke from the wood burning.

There are huge bellows behind the chimney, used to control the fire and the temperature. The Iron smith operated them with the lever just above his head.

There was a nice pond with ducks that we enjoyed feeding. Aaron wanted them to eat out of his hand, though was still thrilled with them coming close and eating at his feet. Hannah took this picture, it's nice to have another photo taker, so I get to be in some pictures.

The English homestead. We decided that the bed quarters for all the houses were quite small. Some of the adult beds didn't look like you could lay down in them. And we found out they didn't'. They usually slept semi upright , to help with breathing and respiratory issues due to sleeping with a burning fire in the room.

This was the nicest bedroom we saw, with a child bed underneath.