Assignment Iowa Classics; 301; Living History Farms

I'm with Mary Jane tonight from the living history. It's not unusual to see a farm in Iowa. In fact it would be unusual if you didn't see a farm in Iowa. But this one is different. This is part of a living museum. That not only allows you to. See what life is like a number of years ago but actually experienced the life that your grandparents may have led in Iowa. It's living history problems and it's located west in Des Moines about 500 acres. It straddles the combined leg of interstates 80 and 35. But when you're out here you don't really notice that. Living History farms is exactly what it says it is. A living. Breathing authentic recreate. I was heritage. A little useful fonts and compass stuff.

I think in brief terms is that the preservation of the history of agriculture now and five hundred acres of good our farmland we have set about to preserve that heritage that lifestyle. That. The farming methods and technology of the farms from 1840 and hopefully with a little bit of a peek into the future. My job is to make sure that our farms in our village and Mantua market as historically accurate as possible so that when people come out to visit and say Is this really what life is like a pioneer farm is this really the way people live 900 horse farms. Is this really the kind of school house the kids want to 1970 will be able to say yeah this is as close to real you know historic. House. Schoolhouse nets Clay is it possible to make it has all the right

smells. Like you're right it's the passports. Help us with the project into the future that also means a hypothetical pilot of today and tomorrow. It's got to be accurate too. That's a lot harder because what we have to do is sort of project ourselves into the year say 2005 and state what will they be saying about plans in the first century of the 21st century a lot of people who really aren't even interested in the farms they come because they're interested in Victorian architecture and they'll take a tour of the restored mansion or they'll go to the schoolhouse and they will reminisce about one room school days or enjoy spending time listening to our blacksmith talk about early blacksmithing methods. Other people are very interested in the far north. Maybe they're interested in powder or cooking and they'll be up to around. The butterfly on the new moon so there are many many activities. I don't have a lot of friends who come out to the farm who are only interested in bringing a picnic

basket sitting under the shade tree. Most open air museums of this kind are past oriented. They look back as let's say Williamsburg goes to colonial America they look back a Stourbridge thought as to what it was like in the New England in the eighteen hundreds. They looked back as Connor prairie does in Indiana just north of Indianapolis to a village in Indiana about the time Abe Lincoln was growing up and a whole less had a sense of nostalgia and people visit the good old days wasn't it nice that it wasn't hard that living history farms does that. But they also look forward into the future and they say What have we learned about. Life and the way to face life from our ancestors from our great grandparents and our grandparents and our parents and this is really the key they make that jump from the past into the future. In addition to showing farms of the past living history has a farm of today and

tomorrow which is now under construction. No not open for tours yet but you can see either on foot or transported by tractor drawn carts are the Flynn mansion a schoolhouse of the late eighteen hundred and old fashioned country store crafts gallery a food gay carpenter shop kiln and pottery shop a veterinarian for Marie and blacksmith shop. All the usual farm animals plus some sturdy oxen which were indispensable animals were the pioneers who crossed the Mississippi seeking good farmland in Iowa. Darwin Tate he built this pioneer farm and operates it exactly as it would have been done in 1840. We built the cabin of the logs at the time of or here in the area. Siang girls were split here at the place and everything but the windows and the door hinges were made of material the stone for the chimney and fireplace and the clay between for tanking. So we used the native materials mostly with the exception of

the windows and door hinges which would have been brought in as a. The two bottom things you might find in the cabin along with some nails. We. Don't want a mar last weekend by opening up and having. A little get together so you're going to do that day on a whim and then go

ahead and do their cooking then preparation cleaning of the cabin. Sometimes garden work or some outside chores. And the man I was go to whatever jobs are in charge of the day or week it would take care of the fading and wandering of the cattle and the pegs and then generally going to field work or whatever in season or whatever job to have a tie on. Sometimes depends a little on the weather you get a rainy day will work in the barn sharpening tools or repairing time and again if it's good weather and seasonal wear out working with your own party not the women. Well of course very important because they take care of all the household duties and the. Spending and the making of clothing then sewing them times repairing. Partially worn out clothing and things so they're very important here at our site. Got a lot of things that they do that would not set well for me and we do it.

Course you're. Well I think we get a better understanding of what it takes to live and what is important. Sometimes you're here working on the very basic things here you work the fire you work with the weather and you're not working in the air conditioned atmosphere or traveling any faster than a very basic locomotion or our travel and I think you just get more out of what really life is about the earth or. What. So so the important things of life. While the first settlers are violate eke out their existence on farms like this a few hundred yards down the road and around the bend time come they're more progressive neighbors on the

horse farm of 1900. Why are you doing this what does it mean to you to live out here and work the farm. What do you get out of it. Well it's a it's an experience that I don't think I'd ever get any other place it's the type of thing that I. I really understand how my grandfather felt when he probably farmed and how the people felt when they came and settled in this part of the country and and started farming I'm getting a real true feeling of what their days were like and what their labor was like and. The type of activities they had to go through every day just to. Earn a living. Aren't you younger then and then an average farm life would be 900. My grandfather my grandmother in the cradle and said I'll marry.

You. Are you doing. Well. Other people and I don't think that much is a whole different story about how to cook and preserve. People were still here. For 30. Years and. We're in the process of getting more. And we do chores we have. We have chickens.

The general chore starts pretty early and then. Right now we're plowing corn. We're trying to farm grows to take more land on. This is my first year in

and I'm trying to. Farm about 30 acres right now. That's not counting on everything. I have to ask you this is a difficult job where the long skirts and looks like you have a lot more clothing. We do call the wrapper in the Sears and Roebuck catalog that we would not have been caught dead with company at her house. We don't have to wear a corset like they would have if they were to have company or go to town which we're very thankful for the skirts are cool. We like the skirts but the long sleeves and high collars get a little uncomfortable on days. As you do in the 1800s. If you could just pick one. 1077. Luxury what would it be. A. Morganatic with a drain in it so you don't have to haul all the dishes. I think that is our most missed.

Item. Tell me how you feel about the society as you see it going today because you know the perspective of what it was like in the 1900s. Can you. Write. The difference. In the way people live. Well the what's missing. Well of course what's missing back then that you have now is your leisure time and. A large problem in today's society I believe people are having a hard time. Trying to figure out and trying to utilize and use their leisure time to the best of their advantages. And use it constructively. People have to have their neighbors and they had more of a relationship built up with close friends and neighbors than we do today. When we lived in an apartment. Before we came here we had. Eight our neighbors who could hear every day through our apartment walls because we didn't really have

any need to. Like they did in 1900 the biggest problem that I guess we have right now is actually being able to acquire enough of the old equipment too. Especially when there is a fracture right here on the farm repair things with the necessary tools such as the old monkey wrench and things like that and be able to do have to replace with a broken piece of machinery that they could have bought or purchased back then exactly what men did and families did you know were not recorded about what went on in the house. Just like today we don't write down that all of our cleaning solutions under our sick and we need to know about those kinds of little things that women did in their home. And. So I guess. I get frustrated not knowing as much as I'd like to know about the way they lived in 1900. I think there may be

more. Women. Pressure to get jobs outside the home. Because the home was such a full time job and there was so much that had to be done just to survive. I don't know sometimes I think choices put a lot of pressure on women. Women in those days didn't have the same kind of pressures. The work was harder the physical work is harder. Society has come so far to allow you to be able to have time to watch TV and watch something that you know. You know may give you an opportunity to work with another person. Or try to help a neighbor out. Why did you come in during the morning I left.

Short answer a long answer. That's a long answer primarily because living history farms is doing something that nobody else in the country is doing. Mary Jane said that when people called a living history farm they're not just shown what life is like that they experience what does that mean. This experience in a sense of history comes alive. Right now you know we could really live history and history is over. But you can you can sort of experience a reasonable facsimile of history and I think that that's a that's an important term reasonable facsimile you know. You go out you buy a reproduction chair you hope that you're getting a reasonable facsimile of an antique And so what we're trying to do in those farms is recreate as closely as possible what a real farm boy would have been like in 1840 in central Iowa and in 1900 and when people go into that farm said it would be as if they were walking back into the past as if they were

experiencing all the things that let's say out of town visitors would experience if they came due to it to us or a distant relatives farm. And. I guess my dream would be that Suppose we had a ghost a pioneer ghost right from the 1940s grew up and lived on a central Iowa farm. And his spirit came back in 1977 to the Pioneer farm and he walked around that farm and he as he walked out said to me just as I remember it that's it. Same thing for 900. Like imagine McKinley coming out giving a speech to the 900 farmers and saying. You know this is difficult because with 100 it's easy because we do have 90 year olds Pete. Born and raised on Iowa farms coming to visit we can say to them is this right. And sometimes they'll say. Yeah

that's right but that's wrong. We never had our spoons you know. There we always put the spoons in it you know in this container in the middle of the table I mean anything you should put your knife and fork over here on the right you know as you're setting your table the modern way you're not setting it the way we used to set it when we grew up in the arms of 900. And that. That. That's that's tremendously exciting because talking with these old timers who really experienced it I'm getting from them firsthand what it was really like. Chris makes our job a lot easier but it also makes it just wonderful because we're in a way helping to preserve their lives this. Is. What you describe the crop center. Barry Wallace crops and that's my favorite. Well first of all it's going to be a very very interesting building. And you've got to imagine you've gone to the Pioneer farm first tirade and you've walked around that very primitive place with its log cabin construction its home spun the oxen pulling the plow and then you've

walked over ridden over to the 900 farm with its machinery its horses its windmill all of its progress. Then you cross a road. And perhaps even down into a tunnel or almost a valley you walk into this crop Center which is underground underground it's covered with earth and planted on that earth are the history of man's crops there are very old types of corn and all types of wheat and sorghum and so on. You go into this building which is 90 feet in diameter and 15 feet high it's it shaped like a large queen maybe a bit thicker than a quarter. What do we put in it. That's a big question. And I think we're going to take our cue from Henry Wallace himself because there was a man there was a there was a I was prophet secretary of the Department of Agriculture in the 30s vice pres in the United States. All of our contemporary problems he foresaw and told people

about in the 1930s and 1940s he foresaw the world food crisis coming. He foresaw the Green Revolution in fact he spent his good part of his life developing hybrid you know corn and hybrid seeds which essentially is the green revolution. He foresaw the need for world cooperation and not competition for the need for countries to get together and decide how the limited resources of the earth were going to be shared. And of course he did this all as prophets do. And in a very strong way and people said you're crazy. That won't happen there's enough food forever will never run out of oil that the future is golden. Well of course now time has caught up with Henry Wallace his prophecies and I'd like to see the crop center essentially look at his thoughts and words of 30 years ago. And out of those thoughts and those words look into the future. Being in charge of historical accuracy you have to have a double loss of

you know ordered to carry out what you're supposed to be doing. And if so what is. It. Oh gee that's a tough question. When you talk about philosophy but I think I do I I just believe tremendously that we mustn't get cut off from our roots that there that we human beings of this society. Let's say the people who live in Iowa our roots are sunk deep into this earth and if we get cut off from those roots and we forget what our origin is and what our relationship to the earth is to nature then we're in danger when the first big one comes along and being blown right right over and becoming rootless people becoming people without a past becoming people who really don't know where they've come from and where they're going and I think this is a problem of let's say America. Many Americans live in cities right now they've just lost touch with their past.

They don't know where they've come from they don't realize that their grandparents feigns face the same problems that they faced and came up with solutions and they don't. And therefore. In a sense they they lose that inspiration because knowing let's say that my grand My grandfather was an immigrant who came from Scotland to Canada and then to the United States and faced you know really hard problems with living knowing that gives me confidence to go into the 20th 21st century. We've got a tremendous challenge here because we're in a sense the tangible memory of Iowa. People from all over the state all over our neighboring states can come here and see their ancestors lived once upon a time. What kinds of problems they faced up to and if we. Accurately remember you know through these living history farms where life really was. We can be of tremendous value to people who are beginning to lose contact with Russia into the future.

A visit to living history farms puts you in touch with your senses. The smell of fresh mown.

The feel of a live animal side. The sounds of men and women working to create a productive life. It also gives you a sense of just what it took to carve out a life from the rich agricultural land of Iowa. And where the road to the nation's breadbasket will lead in coming decades. Join us next week for assignment Iowa.