Finding Myself in the Living History Farm

The canning of peaches is officially behind me now, so I can devote a minute to something else...before I pick up the tomatoes tomorrow.

I still have vacation stories to tell. Shortly after our arrival in Des Moines, my mother-in-law took us to visit the Living History Farm near where she lives. It's an outdoor museum of agriculture that traces the history of farming practices from the earliest Native American settlements through the present day. Okay, I just read my last sentence, and I was asleep with boredom by the end. This place is the very opposite of boring. You walk along a loop of land where they have set up real working farms from different periods of history. There are actors at each place to tell you about their "lives" from other centuries and to provide hands-on opportunities. It's absorbing and fascinating.

In the 1850s farm, this man introduced us to his oxen...and their ear wax. Apparently this was used as an early form of lip balm. My boys especially enjoyed this particular nugget of information.

I was particularly affected by the 1900 Farm.

In 1904 my grandfather was born in Cardiff, Kansas. I have seen pictures of his family's farmstead from this period of time. To come across this tidy little barn and home at a museum in Iowa was both foreign and familiar.

And although I fear coming across as overly sentimental, I somehow felt more connected to both my grandfather.. and to my grandmother who was born 13 years later in Ponca, Nebraska but who must have lived a rural life very much like the one depicted in this faithful simulation.

Here in the parlor of the farmhome, it was hot and humid. I could almost imagine the life of my ancestors as they sat in here on a summer Sunday afternoon, swatting flies.

The kids enjoyed visiting the animals in the barn, and trying out the early farm equipment. We even walked past the stump where the "famers" had beheaded a chicken for their meal that afternoon. It's all very authentic. When we toured the home, the women were in the kitchen washing dishes with water they brought in from the well.

And though I'm grateful to live in a time of dishwashers and drive-throughs, I enjoyed finding myself in my own family past for a day.