Meet the Sheep: Bonnie Jane and Daisy

By: Allison Shelly, Farm Programs Intern

There is a tale from a long time ago that tells of a great naval battle. Homelands are to be protected and invaders to be pushed back. Ships crash against waves and fail to see the rocky shore line, breaking into pieces. The surviving crew swim desperately to shore avoiding the dangerous rocks, finally getting precious land under their legs. They struggle onto shore wet and bedraggled to a new life and a new home, a home that their descendants would grow up in and adapt to.

Who would think that this tale of great ships and shipwrecks would have anything to do with The Farmers’ Museum in the middle of beautiful New York, miles from the dangerous seas, but it does. For it was by the shores of Great Britain that the great Spanish Armada sailed up the English Channel to attack England, and it was there that the English successfully turned them away. But what of those wet crew members floundering onto shore? Why they were sheep of course! The might even be great great great ancestors of our very own Cheviot sheep, Daisy and Bonnie Jane.

Our two full grown Cheviot sheep, Bonnie Jane (left) and Daisy (right) relax in the field. 

There has long been speculation that Cheviot sheep could have been descendants of the sheep that may have escaped from ships in the Spanish Armada. The American Cheviot Sheep Society includes a brief history of the breed in one of their Flock books and they mention such a story. But they are not completely convinced, saying, “This tale, however, has also been given in explanation of the origin of yet other breeds, so that coming from the sea, we may accept it as somewhat fishy in flavor and quality.” Instead, they feel that the Cheviot’s had been living in the Cheviot Hills between England and Scotland for a long time and were originally called “long sheep”. Slowly the name changed to Cheviot sheep, after the Cheviot Hills where they lived.

Whether or not the origins of the Cheviot breed began with heroic sheep swimming ashore or by humbler means, the breed’s introduction to the United States is less mysterious. They arrived later than the Tunis, around 1838, and were imported right into the state of New York by Robert Young of Delaware County. More of the breed entered the United States in 1842, brought by George Lowe, and came to live not far from here in Hartwick. The breed spread into the southern counties of New York, especially our very own Otsego County.

Like the Tunis sheep, Cheviots are listed as a meat breed by the American Sheep Industry Association, but this does not mean that their wool is useless. In fact the historic American Cheviot Sheep Society found great pride in Cheviot wool, claiming that it has fewer oils in it than other sheep and, when washed clean, it is the whitest wool on any sheep. In fact even in the field you can identify the Cheviots by their very white wool.

A close up of Daisy (front left) and Bonnie Jane (front right), with our  Tunis sheep in the background.

Next time you visit the Lippitt Farm, see if you can tell the difference between our sheep. The Tunis has red or light brown legs and face with cream colored wool. The Cheviot has white wool and a white face with no wool on the legs. Any sheep that does not look like these two must be the sheep for the next post, the Delaine- Merinos! So come stop by; Bonnie Jane, Daisy and their lambs always love visitors! 

What Did We Do Before Wonder Bread? - Part 2

By: Adrienna Maxwell, Farm Programs Intern

Back in the 1840s, New York State was one of the top producers of wheat in the country.

To first put things into perspective, it is helpful to look at wheat consumption on an individual level. The average family size at this time was six people. It is difficult to know exactly how much bread individuals consumed. In 1875, in calculating how much flour would need to be traded to Sweden, the U.S. Department of State calculated that a person required about .67 lbs of bread per day. Using that number, the average family of six in the 1840s would consume 4 lbs of bread daily, and 1460 lbs (or about 30 bushels) in a year! In 1845 the average acre in Otsego County (which includes Cooperstown, NY) produced 13 bushels of wheat. That means that families would have to grow just over 2.3 acres of wheat every year to feed just one family. That’s not even accounting for saving seed for the following year or selling seed to millers for profit! Thanks to Jenna Peterson, former Farm Programs Intern, for crunching these numbers.

We have a small demonstration plot of wheat behind the hop house here on the Lippitt Farmstead. It was planted by hand, and then furrowed in by our draft horse, Zeb, and the farmers. This plot is only about 1/18^th of an acre, which means a family of six would need to grow over 41 times this amount of wheat!

So how did they harvest all this wheat and get it from field to table in the mid 19^th century?

Farmers had about ten days at the end of the wheat growing season to harvest the grain before it would separate from the stalk and fall to the ground. They would use a scythe or a grain cradle to cut the stalks and then they would bundle the stalks together into sheaves to take to the barn, where the bundles would be spread out on the threshing floor. Up through the 1800s, threshing (the separation of wheat kernel from stalk and chaff) was done by using a flail to beat the stalks. This allows the grain to separate from the stalks. The winnowing basket would be used to toss the grain into the air, at which point the cross breeze coming through the correctly situated barn would blow the chaff away and leave the kernels. However, with this method some dirt and unwanted debris would still remain and have to be picked out by hand. Another option for threshing grain at this time was to have a team of oxen trample the stalks on the threshing floor, and then use the winnowing basket. Either way, it was hard, time-consuming work.

In this picture, the flail is on the left and the winnowing basket is on the right. These items are hanging in Brooks Barn at The Farmers’ Museum and are used for demonstrations, especially during Harvest Festival (which will be September 15^th and 16^th in 2012). 

The fanning mill was invented to replace the winnowing basket, sometime between the late 1700s and the early 1800s. This separated the grain from the chaff much more easily than it could be done by hand, and as technology progressed the fanning mill had more sieves added to it and became horse powered and such to make the process even faster.

A view of our fanning mill from the end where the grain and chaff is separated. The grain falls through and the chaff is blown away by the fan blades when the machine is being cranked. 

A full side view of our fanning mill, with a glimpse of the fan blades. This is also resting in Brooks Barn, so stop by and take a look! 

Most of the grain produced in this state in the 1840s was concentrated in the Genesee Valley, as mentioned in the previous post I wrote on this topic; it was then ground into flour in large mills in Rochester and shipped eastward along the Erie Canal, which had opened by 1825.

Wheat was a major product in New York State from the time of early settlement through the creation of the Erie Canal and westward crawling railroads. The Genesee Valley was once known as the “Granary of the Country” and Rochester as “Flour City”. So what happened? Why is wheat no longer a major crop of New York State?

As with the movement of most crops, it was a combination of factors. By the end of the 1700s, farmers were already battling a fungal disease called black stem-rust which was prevalent in any place that wheat had long been cultivated. By 1830 the Hessian fly and the midge fly had both wrought severe destruction on the eastern part of the state’s wheat crop, and production had all but ceased to exist in those regions until about a decade later, when the farmers finally figured out how to fight off these pests. And with the creation of the Erie Canal, it became much easier for farmers from the Midwest to grow wheat and ship flour east.

By the end of 1860, New York and Pennsylvania had fallen from the top production spots, and were replaced by Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. The New York State growers held on for awhile because of New York City’s ever increasing demand for grains, but eventually almost all wheat production in the state came to an end. In 2009, New York State was 32^nd in the country for wheat production, though there has been some recent movement to grow organic wheat in New York. If you are interested in learning more about that, I suggest plugging “Northeast Organic Wheat Project” into your Google search bar. You might just be surprised!

Meet the Sheep: Louise and Lillian

By: Allison Shelly, Farm Programs Intern

Over the past couple of months I have had the opportuity to be a Farm Programs Intern, and one of my favorite things to do is watch our sheep on the farm. While on hot days they lay in the shade keeping cool, on milder days you’ll find them lazily grazing, the lambs jumping and playing. Look closely and you might notice that the sheep in our flock don’t all look the same. In fact, there are three different breeds of sheep in our flock, and each has very distinctive features as well as a unique history.

The one breed that is perhaps the most obviously different from the others is the Tunis sheep. These sheep have reddish colored heads and legs with cream or white colored wool. When the lambs are young they have a reddish tinge all over, but as they grow their wool changes to the same creamy white color of their mothers. As with many animal breeds the Tunis sheep did not originate in the United States. They were transported from their home country of Tunisia in North Africa when the Consul to Tunisia sent a number of Tunis sheep (also called Barbary or Mountain Tunis sheep)  to the United States in 1799. It was a tough journey for the sheep, and only one pair survived. They were sent to Judge Richard Peters, who resided near Philadelphia. He soon became an advocate for these sheep, and the breed spread quickly through Pennsylvania, and up into New York, though the majority of the breed spread south down to South Carolina.

Lillian (on the right) and Louise (on the left) are the two Tunis sheep on our farmstead. In the middle is Louise's lamb, born this spring. This ewe lamb is a Tunis-Cheviot mix. Learn more about Cheviot's in the next sheep post!

It soon became apparent that the Tunis sheep were an excellent and  well-rounded breed, providing top quality mutton as well as decent wool. Tunis mutton dominated the Philadelphia market, and while Tunis wool was not as high quality as Merino wool, it often used to make blankets. Even Thomas Jefferson had a few Tunis imported and bred them for the quality of the meat as well as for the wool.

Tunis sheep are very hardy and can handle both hot and cold weather relatively well. This was one reason that the Tunis became one of the more popular sheep breeds to raise in southern states. During the Civil War the breed was nearly wiped out, eaten by hungry soliders on both sides. If it wasn’t for the actions of Maynard Spigener from South Carolina the breed may not have survived. He hid the last flock of Tunis sheep on his property by the Congoree River and managed to preserve the breed! Even today the Tunis are listed in the watch list of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, meaning that less than 2,500 Tunis sheep are registered in the United States. After the Civil War the breed was mostly found in the northern states, though recently the breed has been making a comeback in the southern states as well.

A close up of Louise and her ewe lamb. 

While the Tunis sheep may not have been one of the most popular sheep breeds to have an upstate New York farm in the 1840’s, it was one of the options a farmer would have had. This is why you can come out this summer to meet our two lovely Tunis ewes, Louise and Lillian as well as their quickly growing lambs! Maybe they’ll wander up to the fence so you can see, and appreciate this historic sheep breed.

Stay tuned for more information about the other sheep in our flock!    

What Did We Do Before Wonder Bread? - Part 1

By: Adrienna Maxwell, Farm Programs Intern

Here at The Farmers’ Museum, we recently finished up our busy school programs season. Museum Quest, our school program during May and June, is an adventure of sorts with a variety of learning stations set up throughout the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum. Topics range from trading and bartering goods to making small bean necklaces to take home. I ran the Farm Chores station for most of May and June and you would be amazed at how many of the children started shouting and cheering when asked if they want to be put to work like they would have been in the 1840s! The activity at this station varied from day to day and week to week, depending on what we needed done around the farmstead. On our busiest June days we had the children grinding wheat kernels into flour.

The line went right out the wood shed door of Lippitt Farmhouse! Look at all of our eager workers!

If we had not wanted to grind our flour by hand, other options would have been available to us in the 1840s. By the 1830s, Otsego County alone had 70 gristmills where local farmers could send their grain to be milled. However, most of the flour used in the 1840s was purchased from the local stores, which would have imported their flour from none other than “Flour City” (Rochester, NY) by sending ox-cart men to meet barges at their stops along the Erie Canal as they passed through on their way to Albany.

I held the mechanical corn grinder in place as all of the kids took turns trying their hand at grinding. It’s harder than it looks! This was our way of simulating the process that steam or water-powered mills of the time would have used to grind wheat into flour.

It is important to mention that there are differences between the type of flour we are making in these pictures and the kind of flour that goes into bread that you might purchase from a grocery store today. The recipe for making bread flour began to change sometime in the early 1800s, primarily due to a cultural shift. Flour made from the whole kernel was used primarily by those of the lower classes who could not afford something better; oftentimes it was mixed in with other grain such as rye or cornmeal. The more affluent preferred more refined “whiter” flour for their baking needs, and there were varying degrees of fineness to select from. To make the flour white it was bolted, a process that separated the bran from the rest of the flour and would produce a whiter flour that would also keep much longer than flour with bran left in it. During the 1840s, millers were still unable to separate all of the germ from the endosperm, but over time the technology of mills improved to the point where this was possible as well.

It took over 700 children to grind up enough flour for just a couple of loaves of bread, which our Lippitt House staff baked the following Saturday on the designated weekly baking day. We think we should have worked the students harder to get more flour – the bread was delicious!

Today, we make white flour from only the endosperm of the wheat kernel, which is the white starchy part with the lowest level of nutrition in the whole kernel. The other two parts of the kernel, the germ and the bran, are very nutrient rich and are often neglected in modern day production of flour. We actually feed those parts of the kernel to our livestock to meet their nutritional needs! Even what we consider to be whole wheat bread today is made of flour with only a small amount of bran and germ put back into the flour after it has been processed.

Although social implications played a significant role in this switch, part of the reason that today’s flour manufacturers only use the endosperm could be because the released oils and nutrients of the processed bran and the germ can cause the flour to go bad in less than a week if not refrigerated or frozen.

Modern day flours and breads compensate for the decrease in nutritional value by enrichment with added vitamins and minerals. It would appear that we have come full circle in our wheat and flour production, or at least attempted to, and in quite a strange way!

Come back later this month for more food for thought and read part two, which will focus on the historical production of wheat in New York State.

Prevalent Potatoes

By: Keelin Purcell, Manager of School and Farm Programs

In preparation for a new Lippitt Farm Walk and Talk program, my intern Jenna and I did a lot of research on farms in 1845. One of the topics that I explored was the history and use of the potato (Solanum tubersoum).

Our potatoes growing in early July.

Potatoes are fascinating in that they are so prevalent in our culture’s food, and yet many people do not recognize the growing plant. Make sure to visit to see and touch the plants growing in our Interpretive Field Garden across from the Lippitt House. Another interesting thing about potatoes is while they are referred to as a root vegetable, they are actually tubers, which are enlarged underground stems. So when we eat potatoes, we are eating stems! In contrast, a sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a true root, as are carrots, beets, and parsnips. 

Our potatoes growing in early August.

Potatoes were very important in 1800s agriculture. They supplanted many other root crops, in part because they can be easily propagated asexually by cutting up (eyeing) and planting the previous year’s potatoes. An acre of potatoes also produces four times more dietary calories than an acre of grain.

Because potatoes do not grow true to type, they were almost always propagated asexually. However, by growing them to seed, many different varieties were produced. In 1845, there was a large selection of potato varieties to choose from, though most families grew one or two types. Potato epidemics were fairly common, because all the potatoes of a given type were clones and therefore very susceptible to contracting the same disease.

Potato choices from a 1881 seed catalog in the collection of the NYSHA Research Library.

Potatoes are harvested once the tops die back and would have been dried before going into the root cellar. Potatoes were steamed, mashed, boiled, fried, and roasted, as well as made into flour and starch.

This year we are growing Green Mountain, Red Natural, and Kennebec potatoes in our Interpretive Field Garden, as well as Fingerlings in the Kitchen Garden. I enjoyed the chance to learn more about the history of potatoes, and I am looking forward to seeing this year’s crop. My sources included Judith Sumner’s American Household Botany: A History of Useful Plants 1620-1900, Charles Bosson’s Observations on the Potatoe, and a Remedy for the Potato Plague, and U.P. Hendrick’s A History of Agriculture in the State of New York.

Poultry Progress at the Farm

By: Meredith Doubleday, Public Programs Intern

Since Marieanne’s last broody coop update, we have had a lot of poultry excitement. Most of our eggs have hatched, and we now have chicks, poults, goslings, and a duckling scurrying around the Lippitt Farmstead.

On May 18^th, our broody hen hatched three Dominique chicks. Marieanne fed them the traditional 1840s diet: a mixture of chopped hard-boiled eggs with breadcrumbs, oatmeal, and milk. It was quite an experience to hold in my hand a trembling bundle of new life. As I gingerly held this ball of feathers, its quiet cheeps were a delicate contrast to the persistent clucking of the mother hen nearby.

Now, a month later, they have been out of the coop for a few weeks and are no longer mothered and guarded so closely by the broody hen. They are starting to look and act much more like grub-pecking chickens.

Though I have spent most of my life in either Otsego or Herkimer County, I have never lived on a farm nor raised poultry so I was unprepared for the following. I had always assumed that chickens would only set on chicken eggs, and turkeys would only nest on turkey eggs. However, I soon discovered that this was not the case!

A chicken hen nested on five duck eggs and hatched two ducklings on June 4^th. Not one, but two hens played mama duck with the ducklings as they adjusted to the world (or the coop) around them. Like chicks, ducklings also had a very specific regimen: usually a wet mash of bran, flour, cornmeal and beef scrap moistened with water. Unfortunately, only one duckling survived, but I managed to get a picture of both of them following one of their “mama” hens when they were just a week old.

Our one duckling is now growing rapidly, but it still thinks it is a chicken! Hopefully soon it will realize it has webbed feet and will waddle into the water.

As Marieanne mentioned in her last post, our turkey hen was sitting on nine eggs in the turkey house. On June 6^th, one of the eggs hatched. Much to our surprise it was not a poult but a chick! A chicken must have snuck into the turkey hen’s nest and laid an egg unbeknownst to the turkey and farmers alike. Since turkey and duck eggs take twenty-eight days to hatch, and chicken eggs take only twenty-one, the five poults hatched a almost a week later on June 12^th and 13^th. Here is a picture of two of the baby poults exploring the barnyard on their second day.

The last fowl update is news on our goslings. They are now over two months old and always travel in a cackling mass. Their voices are starting to change as they mature into grownup geese.

Come to the Lippitt Farmstead and visit our growing brood of our lively feathered friends!

Poultry News at Lippitt Farmstead

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

Here is a May update from Marieanne - stay tuned for a more recent update and pictures of the chicks next week!

It is May 15th and our Mama Hen is doing great. Eleven eggs were set under her on April 27th in the broody coop. Every day we let her out late in the morning. I always have to pick her up off the nest and push her out the door of the coop.

Once she is out, she has a regular routine. She scratches in the garden eating worms and insects, clucking constantly and puffing out her feathers like a typical broody hen. At some point she squawks and runs for a short distance, and she spends quite a bit of time dusting in the dirt.

Then she eats the food I have put out for her and drinks some water. I feed her a mix of whole grains – corn, barley, oats and wheat. I have looked in several poultry books from the 19th century and they all recommend feeding only whole grains to a broody hen although they don’t explain why. My guess is that she shouldn’t eat a diet that is formulated for laying hens since she isn’t laying eggs at this time; and I also think the whole grains go through her system more slowly which is probably a good thing since she only gets to eat once a day. Because she is eating whole grains it is particularly important that she has access to grit which is readily available in the garden in the form of small stones.

The first few days I had to herd her back into the coop after a half hour but soon she started going back on her own. As we get closer to hatch date she seems to stay out for a shorter time and she always goes back more quickly on cool day.

We found one of the eggs broken one day. I think it probably cracked when the hen was picked up to go out for the day because I heard the sound of 2 eggs clacking together and 2 days later we found the broken egg pushed out of the nest. So there are 10 eggs left that will hopefully hatch on Wednesday, May 18th. In other poultry news, our turkey hen has laid 9 eggs so far in the barrel we placed on its side in the turkey house. Another chicken hen is setting on 5 duck eggs. And we have added 8 goslings to the farm. They hatched on April 18th and arrived by mail on April 20th. With all this activity on the farm, I am finding it harder and harder to get away to the computer so we may have to rely on Facebook postings for a while for the new news from the farm or better yet, come see us for real and check out the latest farm happenings!

We’ve Got a Broody Biddy!

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

One of our hens has been in a nest box in the chicken house every time I look in.  I tied a string to her leg to make sure it was indeed the same hen every time since they all look alike.  She definitely appears to be a broody hen, in other words she is done laying eggs for now and wants to “set” or sit on eggs until they hatch.  She has that “Do Not Disturb” look about her:

I placed 3 duck eggs under her to help her stay in the mood while I got the broody coop ready.  I used duck eggs because we collect the eggs from the nest boxes twice a day so it is easier to remember which eggs to leave alone should the broody hen be off the nest.

 Meanwhile the new broody coop was moved to the Lippitt garden. 

I left out the wood floor for now because the dampness of the ground is beneficial to the development of the eggs.  I chopped some straw nice and short and placed it in the coop.  If left long, the straw can get caught on the hen’s feet when she leaves the nest and she could drag the eggs out.  Then I hollowed out a spot in the back of the coop and placed three eggs in it.  The coop was ready.

The hen must be moved in the dark so that she is more likely to accept the new location.  This was rather inconvenient since I am not at work when it is dark but it just so happened that I would be in town last Wednesday evening for dinner.  So during the day on Wednesday I dusted Mama hen with Ectiban and that night she was quietly moved to her new location.  The Ectiban prevents lice and mites.  I sprinkled some in the nest also.  In 1845 sulphur was used for this purpose.   Chickens like to “dust” or lay in the dirt flapping their wings and rolling around to get the dirt down in their feathers and then shake themselves as their own prevention against parasites. 

Unfortunately I would not be back at work again until the following Tuesday, but the hen was in good hands with farmers Wayne and Rick while I was gone.  On Thursday Wayne let her out to eat, dust and exercise.  She did just that, but instead of going back in to the broody coop, she went back to the henhouse and her old nest box.  Wayne had to catch her and put her back in the coop.  He decided to leave her in there and put food and water in the coop until I got back. 

This was her probationary period to see if she was really going to stay devoted to the nest and her job as broody hen.  Today I am back at work and so I let her out again.  When I opened the roof of the coop she was sitting tight to the nest of eggs.  I had to chase her off so I would say she is definitely still in broody hen mode.  She spent about a half hour eating and dusting.  She almost went back to the nest on her own but in the end I had to catch her and put her back.  I would prefer that she go back on her own but it may take a few days for her to understand the routine.

She was fun to watch while she was out and about.  The had her tail feathers all fluffed up and she had an important, busy air about her, clucking the entire time.

So the plan is that tomorrow I will let her out about the same time again to eat and exercise.  While she is busy outside, I will replace the 3 eggs with the 11 eggs I want her to hatch.  Then the countdown will begin.  Everyday she will be let out of the coop at about the same time and I will make sure she doesn’t stay out more than a half hour – less time if it is really cold.  Stay tuned for updates on how it is going with Mama hen and her clutch of eggs!

Bees and Hops

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Manager of Public Programs

Last week I watched a screening of Vanishing of the Bees hosted by The Farmers’ Museum and Otsego 2000 as part of our Food and Farm Film Series. The documentary explores Colony Collapse Disorder and the effort to discover why entire hives honeybees are vanishing. (If you’d like to learn more about CCD and Vanishing of the Bees, check out their website: www.vanishingbees.com.) The film series has been one of my favorite programs this year, because it has brought together new and experienced farmers, gardeners, and beekeepers, as well as people who want to know more about their food and how they can support local and sustainable agriculture.

If you’d like to learn more about farming and gardening, you can join us for our new Saturday workday programs at the museum. Once each month from April through September, you can learn about a component of our farm and gardens and then help our farmers with a project at the Lippitt Farmstead or one of our historic village’s gardens.

This Saturday, April 30, from 9am-1pm, you can join us as we install hop poles and prepare the hop field for the season. The farmers will begin with a 45-minute talk on growing hops, followed by a work session and time for questions. Pre-registration for these programs is not required, but you must be 18 years or older. Please come in work clothes and meet up at the museum’s entrance outside the Main Barn at 9am. If you’re not able to make the first workday of the season but would like to receive emails related to the workdays, please email stayconnected@nysha.org.

Hope to see you on Saturday!

Lippitt Farmstead in Winter – Birds, Bees and Building Projects

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter
During the winter, while the museum is closed, it is a good time to mull over ways we can improve our efforts to interpret farming in the 19^th century to our modern public.  This winter I came up with two projects that I hope will enhance our interpretation. 

A Broody Coop

Today most chicks are produced using incubators – cabinets that produce an environment that simulates the one provided by a mother hen.  In 1845, a farmer would depend on a “broody” hen to hatch eggs.   This winter Farmer Wayne was kind enough to help me build a broody coop.  This is just a small container to keep a hen comfortable and safe from predators or interference from other hens while she is setting on eggs.  It does not need to be fancy; it can be an old wood barrel turned on its side with a front made of wire or lath added, or a  wood shipping crate can be converted to a fine broody coop.  For our broody coop, however, we used a design from a text book written for an industrial arts class in 1916.  It really is like a small dog house, larger than what the hen needs to just hatch the chicks, but this way it will serve as a home for her and the chicks for a while after they hatch.  We made this extra sturdy version because we want it to be very safe against predators.  The local wildlife around here is well aware that we really aren’t farmers in 1845 with a protective dog and a shotgun at the ready, so we need to take extra precautions. 

My plan is to put the broody coop in the back garden and set a broody hen in it this spring.  I will be sure to keep everyone posted on this project.

Beehives

Beekeeping was probably as common in 1845 as it is today - not everyone does it but there are plenty of people who do.   We keep a few hives here at the museum and offer two beekeeping workshops every year.  These hives are located on the grounds, but they are strategically placed high on a hill in a pasture where visitors can’t get very close, obviously to avoid the possibility of bee stings.

I have struggled with how to make beekeeping more of a daily hands-on part of interpretation, so this year we are adding two beehives right by the barns at the Lippitt Farmstead.  One hive will be the standard Langstroth hive that was developed by Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth in the mid-nineteenth century and is still widely used by beekeepers today.    Instead of live bees, this hive will contain frames with pictures of what you might see “if” it were a live hive.  It is an excellent teaching tool sold by Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. 

The second hive, will be a reproduction of an old hive in our collection.  It is a simple primitive hive made from rough lumber.  This is a project I can handle.   No scary power tools or high degree of skill required.  I am nearly finished and have done it all with “found lumber” and hand tools just like I imagine the original maker did.  This hive will be kept free of bees also so that we can freely look inside with our visitors.

Hive, Collection of The Farmers' Museum, Cooperstown, NY F0068.1983

These hives will give us an opportunity to let visitors manipulate a hive without risk of being stung and will be an excellent prop to enhance our discussions about beekeeping. 

This ends my Winter at Lippitt Farmstead series; after all, it is spring!  April 1^st is opening day and I am looking forward to talking with everyone face to face and sharing our farm from the barnyard instead from our office! 

Lippitt Farmstead in Winter: A New Experience for Jiggs and Buckwheat

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

Our museum teachers include among their offerings, a tour based on the book, Ox Cart Man. 

I try to make sure I have Jiggs and Buckwheat, our team of oxen, hooked up to their cart when I know this tour is being given to enhance the children’s experience.  However, the book features a single ox pulling a cart, so it has been my hope for a long time to hook a single ox to a cart to go along with the story.  It looks like I will finally be able to make it happen.  This winter we bought a single ox yoke from Nathan Hine (www.thehinefamily.com) in Massachusetts.  After it arrived, I brought it to Pete, in our paint shop, and we selected an historical color blue. 

Next we needed a britchen.  We happened to have one that had been hanging in the barn for years.  The britchen is just a simple harness that is particularly helpful when using a single ox because it helps stabilize the yoke and also allows the ox to use his rump to hold the cart back on a hill or back it up by pushing into the britchen rather than using the back of his horns against the yoke.  We also needed to come up with a back pad with loops to hold the shafts of the cart up.  This we robbed from an old horse harness.  After lots of tweaking and hunting for bits of hardware and leather, Farmer Wayne and I were ready to do a test drive.  Jiggs was our guinea pig.  He is generally the more laid back of the two, so it seemed like a good idea to use him for our first try. 

He was a little nervous about these new sensations on new areas of his body, but he settled into it quickly.  So we headed out for a walk around the grounds.  

He did really well.  What was really interesting was how Jiggs responded when I asked him to back up.  Once he felt how it worked, he really seemed to like that he just had to lean back in the harness rather than push back with his head.  All in all, he did very well on his first solo.  Another day I will give Buckwheat a try.

This has been a fun winter project and it is great to add to the versatility of our team of oxen.  Besides complementing the Ox-cart Man tour, a single ox will be useful for cultivating the gardens where a team would be too wide and for other jobs where less power is required. 

Lippitt Farmstead in Winter: Cows

by: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

The Marble Barn is home to our cows in the winter. Like Zeb, our horse, the cows spend their days outside where we feed them hay; then at night they come into the barn for more hay, some grain, and a nice bed of straw.

We keep two breeds of cattle, Milking Devons and Milking Shorthorns. Both were common breeds during the mid-19th century.

Begonia, a Milking Devon, is three and a half years old and has developed some very nice horns:

 She will be having her second calf this summer.  Her first calf was a bull who we castrated last fall.  He is growing into a fine beef steer:

Duchess, also a Milking Devon, is identified as a heifer because she is young and has not yet had a calf:

And then last - but not least - is Seraphina, our Milking Shorthorn.  Her dam is Daisy Mae and her granddam is Buttercup.  For those of you who have been here at chore time in the past, you may remember milking one or the other.  Someday Seraphina will be the cow that you come to milk, but for now she still has some growing up to do.  As you can see she is doing just that – she has gotten a bit taller since the blog post last summer when we showed her posing with Hugh McDougall, the winner of our naming contest.

She also had a mind of her own when we wanted to take the picture today and she dragged me all over the barnyard, but generally she is a very sweet heifer who enjoys attention.  She is my favorite!

Lippitt Farmstead in Winter: Sheep

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter
Our ewes have been entertaining a guest this winter. He arrived on December 4th.

He is a handsome Border Cheviot ram from Millers Cheviot Acres in New Berlin, New York.

During the breeding season, ewes come into heat approximately every 17 days. They will be in heat (in other words, receptive to the ram) for 24 to 36 hours. We are keeping the ram here until February 1st to allow ample opportunity for him to catch each of the ewes in heat and breed them.

Three of our ewes are exposed to the ram.  Daisy is a Border Cheviot, so any lambs she has will be pure Border Cheviot:

The other two, Ollie and Dancin’, are Southdowns so their lambs will be Cheviot/Southdown crosses:

Some shoot for the Easter market, so they want their lambs born in January and February to reach market weight by Easter.  These lambs are called hothouse lambs.  Other shepherds are more interested in taking advantage of lush pasture in summer, so they want lambs born in spring to sell as feeder or market lambs in the fall.  Our goal as a living history museum is to have our lambs born at a time appropriate to the 1800s, but also to share this precious time with our visitors.  Given the above information and the fact that gestation is 150 days you may want to plan a spring visit with us during lambing time – I’ll let you do the math.

Lippitt Farmstead in Winter - Zebediah

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

Zebediah, or Zeb for short, is a major character in our depiction of a farm in the 19th century. He has been with us at The Farmers’ Museum for thirteen years and has become a favorite of staff and visitors alike. He and I share a birthdate, August 10th. He will be 17 years old this year and I will be – well never mind!


Winter on the farm is quiet and comfortable for Zeb. We occasionally hook him up to a sled and take him through his paces, but mostly he is on vacation. He has a spacious stall that he spends his nights in. We clean it every day and make a fresh bed of straw, put a new supply of hay in his manger, fresh water in a tub and a little bit of grain in his feed box.

During the day Zeb is outdoors. We make sure there is a hole in the ice so he can drink water from the pond.

He keeps track of goings-on and seems to find cross-country skiers gliding along the golf course especially interesting (or scary). He spends part of the day eating hay that we put out for him. Sometimes he is upside down:

Zeb always nickers when he hears us come into the barnyard in the morning. I like to think he enjoys our company along with our service. He gets occasional visits from other staff members this time of year, but I am sure he looks forward to the attention lavished on him every summer by our visitors.

Happy New Year from me and Zeb!