A Tour of The Almanzo Wilder Homestead

   On July 3, a small group of ladies arrived in the little town of Burke, New York. They slowly slid out of the van and ambled over to the general store. One of their number had a rather large, black camera, which she held up frequently, snapping pictures of the visit. She paused at the counter to ask about the picture-taking rules, which were pretty much non-existent; the only thing she couldn't do was take videos. 

  She strolled through the general store...

and made her way to the other end of the building, which was the museum. Before she got there, however, she paused to stick a pin into the visitors' map; she and her sister were the first visitors from Maine for the year!

  Once she finally made her way into the museum, she marveled at the artifacts from the Wilder family (that were behind glass, of course) including Eliza Jane's Latin textbook...

...Almanzo's reading glasses...

 

...and a first edition of Farmer Boy, signed by Laura Ingalls Wilder herself!

  Once the tour guide arrived and made some introductory comments, she headed to the South Barn. (The original barns were struck by lightning, and burned to the ground, twice! So these were not the original barns, only replicas, but on the same foundations.)

 These showed the newspaper clipping of the first barn fire, and a list of the crops/animals they had had.

 

She walked past all the stalls for the animals...

She was intrigued by the light filtering through the barn windows!😁

  In the Big Barn, they had the calves' stalls (Star and Bright) and Starlight's stall. This was Starlight's stall; she was allowed to go in and see how dark it was made to be.

 This would be what Almanzo's milking stool would have looked like:

This was where Father exercised the cattle on cold winter nights:

  She went through the buggy shed, the sheep-shearing shed, the chicken house...but here's the pumphouse, which turned out best...

    From here, she moved on to the garden behind the house. They tried to plant vegetables that were from the time-period...she even got a sneaky picture of the gardener! (ha ha)

  Then, she moved on to Almanzo's house. (This is the original house, with a bunch of renovating done inside and out. Here she is on the front porch:

  Before she toured the inside, however, the tour guide drew her attention to the approximately 200-year-old tree in the yard, that was probably there when Almanzo lived there:

  She toured the kitchen (only part of it is in this picture):

  This was how big their bathtubs were back then!

    An air castle, like Alice made, hung in the kitchen window:

   She toured the dining room, but didn't get a very good picture of it, sadly...nor did she get a good one of the wood room. But the pantry deserves a couple photos...this is the original floor of the pantry:

  Remember when, in the Farmer Boy book, Father and Mother went away for a week, leaving the children at home? Mother told them not to eat all the sugar, but they ended up using all but a bit around the edges. Well, this is how big the barrel of sugar would have been! (The tour guide wasn't sure how accurate that part of the story is.)

  Here are a couple views of the parlor:

  Did you notice the wall in the first picture, where the stove is? That's the wall where Almanzo (in real life, it was his younger brother Perley) threw the blacking brush and made a black streak, right near the middle of the wall. They actually found it while renovating the house! The tour guide had a couple pictures of the streak:

  There were a few 'forbidden' places that she couldn't explore, such as the cellar and the attic, but she was able to peek in:

  Finally, she wended her way up the steep flight of stairs to the bedrooms. She toured the boys' bedroom...

...and the girls' bedroom, which had a huge loom in the middle:

  There were a couple smaller bedrooms, one of which had a blanket woven by Almanzo's mother herself!

  There was one more stop on the tour to make: a replica one-room schoolhouse:

 

       After the tour, she wended her way to Trout River, where the Wilders' had washed their sheep before shearing:

  Last of all, she stopped at the general store again, and made a purchase to remember her visit by...a clothespin doll!

  She hopes you enjoyed your tour!😁