We've visited Upper Canada Village countless times over the years. Yesterday's visit by far blew the others away. Even our friends who had never visited the village before were impressed by what they saw and who they interacted with.
We arrived half hour after opening and they were still welcoming people at the hotel.
Touring around the village in a horse-drawn wagon is the best way to get an overview of what the village encompasses. After that, we headed out on foot with one of our first stops, the Lutheran minister's house. Below we are being educated about the politics in the world of 1850's religion. The Lutheran pastor switched denominations and went Anglican because the pay and standard of living was better.
Maybe it's because we were visiting early in the season, or maybe the staff has had time to refurbish the village and get excited about the new year, but it seemed that every building looked refreshed and most of the staff were enthusiastic and entertaining.
We learned that there is an official gardening/tree team of two there. The gardens were wonderful. They practise good rotation of vegetables and hardly have any pests.
Below is the horse-drawn wagon. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that it was empty!!! as I rounded the corner to the hotel. We got front row seats and had a fun chat with the driver throughout the village.
Going back year after year, you get to recognize certain actors. The Dutch baker has been with the village for decades. He bakes hundreds of loaves/day. I was torn between posting the picture of his light blue eyes or this one. I love the flour dust rising from the breads.
Don't know how we were so fortunate yesterday, but just as we were debating when to have lunch, we looked over and Willard's Hotel had 3 empty tables on the porch. The menu seems like it has been re-vamped to better reflect a historic menu. One of our group had Welsh rarebit, Ted and I sampled the baker above's bread with locally made cheese and jam, and some others had pea soup. Below a pie was shared by two of our group. Yum!!!
Fortified for foot travel, we continued our adventure. There really is another man doing the haying. If you look carefully, you can see his legs. Didn't see him do much work. But, this guy!!!! He was a machine. The nature of work has changed so much in 150 years.
Some kids have the most fun summers. It looks like more girls than guys signed up for the summer camp. It looks like these kids are Senior Interpreters. Notice their lunch baskets?
In the summer kitchen of Louks farmhouse there was some preserving happening. Some of these jars are still from last year so visitors can get an idea of all the canning they do. They were working on canning red currents. I can't begin to imagine the heat they will need to endure in the coming weeks.
Sometimes you meet a person who challenges your thinking. This gardener won that prize yesterday. Spilanthes - toothache plant. So, back in the day, when you were forking hay on to a wagon, or hoeing the garden and your tooth began to ache, if you were lucky you would be growing Spilanthes. You could not take time off mid load of hay, but you could grab a Spilanthes flower, split it in half, and chew on it. The gardener asked for a volunteer and Ted was the only one to accept the challenge. Can you see the look of interest on everyone else's faces? So, after he bit into the toothache plant, it really numbed his mouth for about 10 minutes.
And, the hay is making its way to the barns.
We kept an ear tuned for the horn that indicted that the horse-drawn boat was about to leave. In the 1800's canals were dug along sections of the St. Lawrence where there were rapids. Horses pulled very large bateaux filled with goods and people along these canals to avoid the treacherous rapids. I noticed that a lot of women are now holding positions like this horse handler. That might not have been true back in the day.
The skies were stunning yesterday.
As the day wore on, that wagon continued to carry visitors around the village.
The gardeners' work was everywhere.
We were wondering if the animals would be back at the village after being closed during the pandemic. No need to worry! And, our kind of animals were there too.
I think they must have put benches outside the printing shop so villagers could discuss the weekly news. Once/week the newspaper was published. These benches would have been filled with local farmers. Yesterday, only not-so-local farmers rested and chatted there.
We toured the sawmill, flour mill and woolen mills, a shoemaker, a tinsmith's shop and various farmhouses and barns. The end of the day chores were being completed near closing time. It looked like this young lady was training a new milkmaid. By the time we saw them, the milk pail was almost full!
This newborn calf was drinking a pail a day. It was 8 days old. Notice the after-a-good-meal contentment on its face. Or, is it thinking, "What was I thinking? Drinking that whole pail of milk?"
Cows were sent out to pasture and we sent ourselves home.
Back to today.
All eight of us commented more than once about the enthusiasm expressed by most of the staff at the village. Upper Canada Village took us away from 2020 for a day. It was wonderful.
“Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species,
the average life span was less than thirty years?
You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood,
right?
There was no planning for retirement,
There was no planning for a career.
There was no planning.
No time for plannning.
No time for a future.
But then the life spans started getting longer,
and people started having more and more future.
And now life has become the future.
Every moment of your life is lived for the future--
you go to high school so you can go to college
so you can get a good job
so you can get a nice house
so you can afford to send your kids to college
so they can get a good job
so they can get a nice house
so they can afford to send their kids to college.”
John Green
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