Schools Need Reservations Now for Garfield Farm
Museum's Student Harvest Days October 5th
CAMPTON HILLS—Garfield Farm Museum is currently taking reservations from
school groups for its annual Student Harvest Days event on Friday, October
5, from 9 am - 1:30 pm. During this event, children will have the
opportunity to connect with their rural heritage through period
demonstrations of common farm activities, such as candle dipping, flailing
wheat, shocking and shelling corn, and making apple cider.
Harvest Days provides children and adults an opportunity
to learn about the realities of our rural heritage. The historic
demonstrations remind us 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
captures the attention of young and old alike at the cider pressing
demonstration.
The demonstrations of 1840s household and farm skills at
Harvest Days stimulate young minds to be creative in problem solving. Their
imaginations are even 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.
Tours of the 1846 brick inn will be ongoing. These tours
often spark conversations between grandparent and child as grandparents
recall their childhood visits to relatives‚ farms. Tours of the museum‚s
prairie reconnect visitors to nature and its resilience, as the last prairie
flowers bloom and go to seed.
Students will have a chance to help screen soil for
artifacts as part of the 5 Year Archaeological Investigation sponsored by
Campton Historic Agricultural Lands. Test pits will be dug in an
effort to find the original well and other features that were on the farm
when the Garfield family moved here from Vermont in 1841.
Reservations are required for Student Harvest Days on
October 5th can be made by contacting the museum at (630) 584-8485 or email
info@garfieldfarm.org. Students under 13 years are $4 each and students 13
and over and chaperones are $5 each. On Sunday, October 7th, the museum will
hold annual Harvest Days event for the general public from 11:30am-4pm, $6
for adults and $3 for children under 12 with family. Organized youth groups
on Sunday are $4 under 13 years of age.
The 370-acre Garfield Farm Museum is the only
historically intact former 1840s farmstead and teamster inn being restored
by donors and volunteers from 3000 households in 37 states 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 more information about Garfield Farm send an e-mail message to: info@garfieldfarm.org
or call 630/584-8485.
