Pumpkins for All: Part 2

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter

In part one I showed the three varieties of pumpkins we grew this year at the Lippitt Farmstead. In addition to making a wonderful pie ingredient, pumpkin is also a great food for our farm animals. To make it easier for them to eat, it is first chopped into bite-sized pieces. 

I offered the freshly chopped pumpkins to several of our animals at Lippitt Farmstead and got mixed results. The pigs of course ate them, but then, they will eat anything!

The turkeys were skeptical...

...the geese gave it a try...

...but in the end they were not interested.


The chickens, however, loved it!

Ollie, our Southdown sheep, remembered eating pumpkin in the past and dug right in.

The rest of the sheep were not impressed, but I have been feeding them pumpkin sprinkled with grain for several days and now they eat it right up. Animals tend to be neophobic and often hesitate to try new foods, but once they sample it with no bad results they are happy to add it to the menu.


Last but not least, Seraphina is a huge fan of pumpkin.

Of course this is only appropriate since you may recall from an earlier blog post, her namesake was also fond of pumpkin!

Lippitt Farm Walk and Talk Lessons

by: Jenna Peterson, School and Farm Programs Intern

Part of my internship this summer has been gathering information on different agricultural topics, and using it to write interpretive lessons to be delivered by our farm staff. The farmers do an amazing job of talking about a variety of farm subjects, and I was able to provide them with more primary source material to work with, including census data, journal articles, and seed catalogs all from the middle of the 19^th Century.

One of the reasons to have a goose on the farm is to collect their down feathers for use in pillows. 

There are four different talks that can be given based on these lessons; corn, poultry, crops, and the interpretive field garden. The corn talk focuses on changes in technology and farming practices, and how that impacted corn growers in the 1840’s and today. While I don’t think I was assigned to research corn because I am originally from Iowa, it probably didn’t hurt! The poultry talk focuses on the different varieties of poultry farmers would have had, including chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and even pigeons. We have everything but the pigeons here at the museum, so it is a great chance to see how they would have been raised. For the crop talk, the focus is more on the unexpected crops farmers grew alongside those we think of today. This means looking at things like buckwheat, barley, hops, tobacco, and my personal favorite, mangel wurzels. Be sure to check out this post from Farmer Marianne about mangel wurzels if you are interested in learning more!

Mangel wurzels, a type of beet, were commonly used as animal feed.

The final talk is not actually given by our farmers, but is instead led by myself or my supervisor. We take visitors through the interpretive field garden planted in front of the Lippitt House, and discuss the history of these field crops, as well as the different parts of plants that we eat. Did you know potatoes aren’t actually the root of the plant? Come listen to our talk and I’ll tell you all about it!

Corn was planted in a checkerboard fashion with squash and beans, modeled after the Native American Three Sister's Gardens.

These talks will take place at 2:00pm every day through Labor Day. They leave from the steps of the Hop House, and are open to all visitors. If you happen to be near the museum, stop by and learn more about farming in 1845. 

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!