Stained Glass
The Pioneer Association had moved an old church into the village and placed it next to the country school. John remembered the church as the one he attended with his aunt and uncles when he worked on their farm. The church has a stained glass window in its tower above the choir loft.
Phone
An old play telephone was among the school house games. We were surprised to learn that the dial phone first appeared in 1919 and continued to be available until the late 1970s. We remember having to crank up “Central” and vocally request connection to a two or three digit number. John’s home number was 121 and Lois’ was 91. We’re still using dumb phones. Whatever happened to two tin cans between a stretched string?
Games
We found an interesting tic-tac-toe game board on an activity table within the country school house.
Type
Pioneer Village has its own print shop. An operator typed text onto a 90 character linotype machine keyboard and printed it out for onlookers.
The linotype was used to print newspapers, magazines and posters from the late 1800s through the 1960s and into the 70s.
Trouble
The threshing demonstration was interrupted by a belt that refused to stay in place on its pulleys. A bit of troubleshooting found accumulated debris in an axle housing that had frozen up a drive shaft.
Stream
Workers pitched bundles and machine separated wheat from chaff, funneling wheat to a grain wagon and blowing a stream of straw onto the ground to be stacked. The resulting dusty debris sticks to sweaty bodies and itches terribly. Workers soon learn to move upwind whenever possible.
Harvest
The tractor replaced the steam engine to power threshing machines. Manpower was still required to pitch bundles, however. As a teenager, John pitched bundles at harvest time on his aunt and uncles’ farm not far from this reenactment, although the tractor used was a bit newer than this one.
Electric
The Pioneer Association uses its own steam engine powered generators to provide electricity to its various facilities.
Muscle
Drive shafts. gears and belts transmitted horsepower muscle to a threshing machine which separated the wheat from the chaff or straw. Manpower pitched wheat bundles from wagons onto the machine’s conveyer.
Equine
Pioneer demonstrators hitched five teams of horses to a turnstile attached to a vertical axle. The horses pulled together in a circle creating a literal 10 horsepower.
Domestic Animals
Harnessed horses worked in teams pulling wagons and powering machines during Pioneer Days just as they did in earlier times. John was reminded of Prince, his favorite horse on his aunt and uncles’ farm.
Wheat
“Give us this day our daily bread . . .”
Wheat has been cultivated for 10,000 years and today we commit more farmland worldwide to growing wheat than any other crop.http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/wheat.htm
We visited Le Sueur County Pioneer Power Ass’n.’s Pioneer Days and relived a part of growing up in rural southeastern Minnesota.
A Photo Journey 