October 14, 2011

Pioneer Weekend-Saturday Part II

Throughout the day our family and friends stopped by to come and visit us. Amber was on her way to a bacheloretette party while I was off to my dowdy duties. Oh how the times have changed in the last 150 years!

For lunch we had purslane salad, pickled eggs, pickled purslane and leftover cornbread. After lunch we got to see the new oxen Buck and Dan who are currently in training. They are adorable!They will soon grow up to be bigger than Dan and Mike! BTW I won a first place ribbon in the Museum's Agricultural Fair for the picture below :)In the afternoon we got the opportunity to tour around the village and try out some of our areas of interest. The boys made the rounds at the blacksmith shop and M and I checked out quilting, weaving and spinning. I got to try my hand at quilting which I really liked since I will be quilting my National Park project this winter. It’s amazing how difficult weaving and spinning are!The loom was the hardest. So many steps and a lot of hand eye coordination is required. Makes me really appreciate store bought clothes!
After working up an appetite trying our hand at various trades, we reconvened for an amazingly delicious dinner. We had roasted chicken, potatoes, maple glazed carrots and biscuits. The chicken had roasted all day by spinning on a string hung from the ceiling. It was all scrumptious but my favorite were the maple glazed carrots. I could have eaten a whole pot!

After dinner, it was off to our own private barn dance! I had a great time and haven't laughed so hard in a long time. The Museum’s dance troupe kindly stopped by to teach us some old timey dances. What we lacked for in ability we sure as heck made up for in enthusiasm. Earlier in the day we had Ma and I had made soda crackers and Don had managed to snag some cheese so we even had a nice refreshment table of cheese and crackers. It tasted delicious after all that spinning and sashaying and dipping. We also had switchel aka haymakers punch. Switchel is a drink made of water mixed with vinegar, and often seasoned with ginger and molasses. It is very tart and certainly not for everyone but I thought it was delicious. We danced til the sun went down and we still weren’t tired so Kyle and I once again headed out to get some pictures by the light of another gorgeous moon. Upon coming back to our candlelit cabin, us kids moved all of our straw ticks inside because we didn’t want to bed down with the noisy geese again. My favorite moment was Saturday night when all us kids brought our ticks in from outside to sleep in the cabin. As we all curled up on the floor, it really hit us that this was exactly what life was like for Joseph Felix Burns, 150 years ago; up with the sun, down with the sun and work hard all day in between with complete reliance on your family for support.I missed having my family around when I lived in Colorado and we haven't spent so much quality time together in I don't even know how long so it was really nice to have this weekend for all of us to spend together. Someone even commented that we work very well together as a family and I was very honored to hear that.

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