we're baack!

Back from our trip to Williamsburg, stopping at the Landis Valley museum for their Harvest Days in Pennsylvania Dutch country. The kids had a great time -- they got to make a rope, grind corn, wash up both near the soap lady and again at the town pump, make sauerkraut, etc.

In the first house we walked through, the two women were stuffing ground up pig into it's own intestines -- mmmm.

Next we wandered out into a courtyard, to watch a man bake pies and bread, taste heirloom varieties of apple and visit the nut man. This guy had the coolest gadgets to help gather nuts. He showed us how to open and what to do with black walnuts, as well as many other tree nuts. Dante and Luke ended up buying one to help get the crazy amount of acorns off our lawn since the squirrels seem overwhelmed this year.

While they were mesmerized by the nut man's gizmo, Lucia and I watched this woman stir her cauldron of soap. She was not alone in walking about barefoot -- many of the interpreters were. Something about saving their shoes for the winter.

Here's Lucia washing up with a sample bar of this woman's soap. I also offer this as a before shot to what comes later in the day. You see, before we left the house for vacation, Dante came running into the kitchen to inform me that Lucia was doing strange things upstairs with the hand soap in the bathroom. Busy packing, I didn't do much of anything about this, figuring as long as she wasn't eating it, what harm could there be? Well, as it turns out, she was applying said soap to her hair as "gel". Where she gets such a thing, I haven't a clue. I don't think we're know as big "product" users.

So anyway, with about a half a bottle of hand soap in her hair, she looked like she hadn't washed her hair in weeks. So I put it up into a little band and hoped for the best. As I sat on the hay bale shooing flies from the her apple dumpling, Lucia spotted the water pump across the way and made a beeline. I turned to check on Dante's place in the ropemaking line, and looked back for Lucia only to find that not only had she doused her head in the pump, but she now had a head full of suds. Much to the amusement of the people around the pump, who all seemed to be wondering where the obviously neglectful parents were.

Squaring my shoulders, I made my way to her side to inquire if she needed help. Some of the other kids were delighted to pump the water while I held her up underneath and washed the soap out. The paper towels from the nearby restroom didn't go a long way to drying her squeaky clean mop, but they gave us an excuse to bow out of the spotlight and let the witnesses disperse.


This guy told us all sorts of stories from his childhood on a farm as he taught us about corn and its many forms: shelled, cracked, meal, flour, etc. He had cool gadgets as well, and the kids got to try each step. Here Dante struggles to turn the cracked corn into cornmeal.