Trip Report: Farmers' Museum

I took a wee road trip to Cooperstown, NY, over the weekend, and it's a fun place, I must say. In addition to visiting the Farmers' Museum, we went to Brewery Ommegang and of course the Baseball Hall of Fame. We did not get to the Petrified Creatures Museum of Natural History, sadly. I'll have to save that roadside attraction for another day.

So listen, y'all: the Farmers' Museum is a blast. Yes, there are lots of old farm tools sitting around waiting for visitors to care, but there's lots of stuff happening as well. There's a carousel!



Noah was on the chicken and I was on a frog.

There's a Historical Hoax! The Cardiff Giant!



There was a country fair tent full of fun olde timey games to play. As is our way, we got rather competitive over the bean bag toss. They have a barn full of baby animals. I'm a sucker for baby animals every single time.



There are also lots of people doing historical reenactments of things. mostly people making stuff that gets used around the farm. There were blacksmiths, a guy doing letterpress printing, a woman baking biscuits without running water or gas/electricity, and a kind gentleman who stopped chopping wood to demonstrate several of the fiber-related things they have going on, including spinning wool on this great wheel.



Note those beautiful naturally-dyed yarns behind him. He was chopping wood to keep the fires going for his dyepot that day. He also did some weaving on this here giant loom. The weft is handspun flax, which is also a demonstration, but I didn't see that.



Like I said, there's lots of old tools to look at, which includes both looms and spinning wheels.



I regrettably cropped it out of the picture, but check out the distaff on that wheel. They are traditionally used for flax spinning.



Noah is in there for scale. These are big looms!

We only stayed at the museum for about two hours because we had to keep moving with our busy itinerary (read: we had beer to drink), so I missed a lot, including meeting the full grown sheep. I hope I can make it back another day!