Back across America, back in time (5 July)

After wonderful visits in Maine and Plimpton, which will be documented at a later date, we left Glori and Mike's cosy home and travelled to Old Sturbridge Village. This lovely reconstruction of a rural New England town, with its costumed historians, farmers and artisans, as well as heritage breed animals, offers a fascinating  introduction to early American living between 1790 and 1840.

shoemaker

There were numerous demonstrations of different trades and details of everyday homemaking with everyone very knowledgeable and taking time for a chat. In contrast to the Plymouth Plantation (which we visited with Glori and Mike), where all of the participants spoke disconcertingly in the present tense, here everything was explained in the past tense. 

We saw this shoemaker at work, (putting on the soles after women had sewn together the uppers), a water power driven saw mill,  pottery making, cooking, caring for the animals, hay cutting, printing (where the printer had smeared black ink on his face, then made it even more decorative while trying to remove it).

Bringing in the hay by ox cart

We spent several hours enjoying the village (much like Ballenberg in Switzerland) and even took a little nap in the herb garden before continuing on to Milford, where we spent the night. Below some impressions of Old Sturbridge Village.

Cutting back weeds in the Rye


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