Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Days Off!

As many of you know my better half is a full time Farmer, known here as 'The Farmer'.  Days for him are early and long.  He leaves the house in the morning about 5:30, milks 50 something cows and spend the next 6 or 7 hours working on crops or repairing machinery  then goes back and milks the 50 cows again, coming home at about 7 pm these days.  He does this for 20 days and then has a day to himself,  or for the jobs at home.

Sunday was his day off, we had planned to sneak in another camping overnight, but the forecast of rain just didn't seem to make a one night stay feasible.
What to do?  We went to see how they did his job 75 years ago at Lang Pioneer Village, just outside Keene.
 There was some Threshing.
 There were a few guys doing blacksmith work.
The highlight for me was the Jacquard Loom.  They have built a new exhibit that when done will demonstrate how this amazing loom would have worked 100 years ago.  (The first computer card system was inspired by the technology used in this loom, as the threads are either up or down, 1's or 0's)

We spent the day wandering the grounds meeting  many lovely volunteers and had apple pie for lunch!

I brought home a souvenir:




I am not sure what I will do with this lovely yarn,  someone in Ontario raised the sheep, someone else sheared the sheep, then the fiber was sorted, cleaned, carded, spun and they dyed it (with natural dyes) and I bought it for $7!

Thank-you to those who work hard to provide us with all that we take for granted.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend.


2 comments:

Paula said...

I love going to Lang. We should go again now that Ella is older. It's funny to see how many of the 'pioneer' things Colin and I still use in our everyday lives :)

It's good to drag the Farmers away from the farm sometimes.

Tagati said...

Aloha,

Luved the pix of the ways things used to be done.

I too luv to purchase unique single skeins of yarns... Now, if I only knew what to do with them!

Mahalo