Saturday, December 2, 2023
A pleasant day for a Colonial Christmas at the Colonial Pennsylvania Plantation in the Newtown Square, PA section of Ridley Creek State Park. The venue is a living history museum dedicated to presenting farm life in 1760-1790.
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View across the pasture to the barn (1978 reconstruction
of an 18C barn replacing a 19C one) |
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Behind the kitchen garden is a stone cabin (late 1600s),
which may have been the first residence on the property |
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The stone farmhouse (center section c 1690,
later additions in 1740 and 1810 perhaps) (KSS) |
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Visitors could make a pomander, poking
cloves in patterns into an orange to hang
in a home to provide a spicey scent |
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| Spinning wool was demonstrated |
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| A knitter listens to live colonial music |
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| Hmm, wine and liqueurs? |
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| The hearth kitchen |
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| A young reenactor describes his favorite treat |
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| The list of what was baked today |
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| The farmstead well |
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| The blacksmith enlisted help to work the bellows |
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| Candles, probably made of paraffin |
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Visitors could dip their own candles,
but the pot was shallow, and somehow
collected detritus being left out all week ... |
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| ... so the candles turned out lumpy |
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| A view inside the stone cabin |
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This young woman had a wool carder, but at the
moment she was needle felting/getting the wool
fibers to bind together |
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| Rust, the ox, celebrated his ninth birthday today |
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The turkey should be celebrating that
he missed being a Thanksgiving meal |
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A view of the kitchen garden,
with perhaps a trellis for growing hops |
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| The 18C style outhouse (1991!) |
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| Ridley Creek runs along one side of the farmstead |
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| There are a few different breeds of sheep |
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This might be a Leicester Longwool sheep;
there was also a Soay from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland |
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In the Media section of Ridley Creek State Park,
a trail was blocked by downed trees, so we did not try
to find the Roundtop farmstead of the Minshall family |
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