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News from Garfield Farm |
CAMPTON HILLS- On Sunday, October 2nd Garfield Farm
Museum's Harvest Days will celebrate its 30th year of portraying the
settlement history of northern Illinois from 11:30am - 4pm. As a
traditional community gathering of familiar faces and new friends,
Harvest Days demonstrates how Illinois‚ past will be portrayed in
the future when Garfield Farm Museum is fully developed and
authentically functioning as an 1840s working farm.
What started as its first fundraiser to generate
interest and economic support, it was known as the Fall Festival and
featured various opportunities for entertainment and education.
Originally a pet show with best dressed pets and a Sunday morning
breakfast were some of the different ways to draw attention to the
museum during this event. As time evolved and development of the museum
advanced, more of the history of the farm was featured including
demonstrations of historic mid19th century household and farm
skills. Today almost all of the activities of Harvest Days
directly connect to a past era in America that is so hard to imagine
today.
Just being out on this 374 acre farmstead
with its woods and prairie, gravel road and dirt lanes, and its green
fields of hay and golden brown stands of corn, is an escape for most
visitors and certainly a respite from the hustle of modern life. The
event itself is a cultural phenomena as neighbors and friends from as
far as California come to help put on the activities for others to
enjoy and discover.
Harvest Days provides children and adults alike
with the opportunity to learn about the realities of our rural
heritage. The historic demonstrations remind all of the incredible
amount of effort it took to survive in a non-mechanized world. As wheat
is run through the fanning mill, children can see firsthand how the
grain that made the mid-west so important, was processed in the 19th
century. Fall was the time to harvest the bounty of the orchard, and
apples were a versatile and important crop. The flash of red and
clatter of gears, the sweet fragrance that arises as the apples are
crushed, and the golden brown cider flowing into the bucket capture the
attention of young and old alike at the cider pressing demonstration.
The demonstrations of 1840s household and farm
skills at Harvest Days stimulate the minds of the young and the old.
Their imaginations are catered to by the words and tall tales of Reid
Miller, Teller of Tall Tales, whose traditional yarns and songs fit the
historic setting of Garfield Farm.
Visitors can watch an archaeological excavation
near the site of the original log cabin built in 1835 and help screen
the soil for evidence of the Culbertson and Garfield families that once
lived there. The excavation will be conducted by Jim Yingst from the
Heartland Archaeological Research Program.
Tours of the 1846 brick inn will be ongoing.
Tavern tours often spark conversations between grandparent and child as
grandparents recall their childhood visits to family farms.
Children will delight in seeing the museum's
farm animals. These include mostly rare heritage breeds of chickens,
turkeys, sheep, hogs, and oxen. Tours of the museum's prairie reconnect
visitors to nature and its resilience, as the last prairie flowers
bloom and go to seed.
A bake sale will
be held and refreshments offered in the museum's visitor's center, the
Atwell Burr House. Donations for Harvest Days are $6 for adults and $3
for children under twelve.
Garfield Farm Museum is the only historically
intact former 1840s Illinois prairie farmstead and teamster inn being
restored by donors and volunteers as an 1840s working farm museum.
Garfield Farm Museum is located 5 miles west of Geneva, IL off ILL
Rt.38 on Garfield Road. For information, call (630) 584-8485 or email
info@garfieldfarm.org.