Daily Workshops Coming to The Farmers’ Museum

By: Keith Rohlman, Public Programs Intern

I’m excited to announce that starting July 5th, The Farmer’s Museum will be offering daily workshops on different crafts from the 1840s. All of the workshops will start at 1:00 pm sharp, and you can sign up in advance or on the day you choose to visit the museum. Sign up sheets will be in the building where the craft takes place.

On Mondays our blacksmith, Steve Kellogg, will be instructing a lucky few in how to forge your very own clothing hook for your home.

On Tuesdays our pharmacist, Patrick MacGregor, will be instructing visitors in the methods used in the 1840s to craft medicines.

Wednesday is a double-header! Gwen Miner will be showing us all how to bake in a hearth oven, and Wayne Coursen will be showing us how to mow with a scythe. And, last but certainly not least, Ted Shuart will be giving lessons on printing with a Washington press.

These workshops only cost $10, and you can sign up in the building where the workshop is held.  If you have questions, or would like to reserve a spot in advance of your visit, please call Kajsa Sabatke at 607-547-1453.

2010 - Lift Off!

By: Erin Crissman, Curator

This year will mark my second full year as Curator at TFM. Since I arrived in May of 2008, I’ve been completing projects scheduled before I arrived, assessing what needs to be done and making priority lists for the future. This year, though, I feel more at home (partly due the house my fiancée and I purchased right in the Village of Cooperstown) more a part of the team, rather than the “new curator.” Here are a few things I’ll be working on in 2010: Historic Village

Pharmacy Restoration. Like Dr. Jackson’s Office last year, the Pharmacy will receive some TLC from the curatorial and facilities departments. We emptied the pharmacy of its collection objects, herbs and glassware to ready it for the plaster-repair crew to begin next week. This project is slightly less intense than Dr. Jackson’s office. The Pharmacy is just receiving an interior face-lift rather than a complete overhaul and new exhibition. Stay tuned for photographic updates! Bump Tavern: This is often considered to be the gem of our building collection at the museum. Bump was one of the first non-craft buildings to come to the museum (in 13 pieces!) and although it receives a lot of maintenance, it hasn’t had serious attention in about 10 years. In a multi-year project, Bump’s exhibition rooms will get a face lift, some new printed interpretation and new paint. Come out to see our newly polished gem Memorial Day weekend. New collection initiatives

Thanks to a very supportive donor, TFM will undertake two major collections projects in 2010.

The first is to create a new collection of rural photography that will document changes in agricultural practice and farm family life in Central New York from 1840 to the present. Think you have some photographs in your family’s collection that might fit into this new initiative? Stay tuned for further updates! Above: Dagerreotype of Patience Clark Armstrong, Plainfield Center, Otsego County, NY ca 1850-1875. The Farmers' Museum Collection, Museum Purchase, F0003.2006(02)

We’ll also be launching a new collections website, an on-line database, in conjunction with the New York State Historical Association Research Library. This new project will provide incredible access to many of our 20,000 objects with contextual information from the NYSHA Research Library’s collection. Over the next 12 months, you’ll be able to explore our collection of woodworking tools, for example, and also find related library materials like trade catalogs, cabinetmaker account books, business records and other manuscript material. I can’t wait for these exciting projects! Share

Hops in the Pharmacy

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Interpretive Projects Coordinator

We don’t just use hops to make beer and yeast at the museum. The pollen from hops, which you can see in this picture (the yellow dots), also contains useful medicinal properties. In Thrall Pharmacy, Patrick uses the hops to make an extract – or tincture – of hops. Making tinctures is a technique that can be traced back to 13th-century France. To create it, Patrick adds hops to alcohol in a jar and lets it sit so the oils in the pollen dissolve into the liquid. He uses a tincture because it stores very well, lasting between 3-5 years. Pharmacists used hops for a couple of medicinal purposes. Hops contain Lupilin, a bittering agent that acts as a digestive stimulant to help treat digestion problems. It also contains valerianic acid – the same chemical that is in chamomile –a natural sedative. For this reason, hops were sometimes an ingredient in nerve tonics. Pharmacists usually purchased hops that were left over from previous seasons and they classified them into three categories: “yearlings,” “olds,” and “old olds.” The yearlings had about 2/3 the potency of fresh hops, the olds were about half as strong, and the old olds were very weak, according to A Cyclopaedia of Six Thousand Practical Receipts, published in 1845. A pharmacist had to take this potency into account when preparing treatments for his patients.

Heritage Plant Sale Celebrates 15th Anniversary

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Interpretive Projects Coordinator

2009 marks the fifteenth year that Supervisor of Pharmacy and Historic Gardens, Patrick MacGregor, has run the Heritage Plant Sale on Memorial Day weekend at the museum. Patrick’s sale has been successful because when people buy their new plants, they take home a piece of the museum and its gardens. He is often approached by visitors who report back on plants they bought as many as ten years ago. To supply plants for the sale, Patrick takes propagated cuttings from the museum’s heritage gardens and grows them offsite in other production gardens. He collects pots from museum staff, members, and other sale supporters and he pots all the plants prior to the sale.

The plant sale has developed some die-hard fans. Three years ago, Patrick had just sold his last Trillium – a historic and rare plant - when a woman came to look for one. She was from New Hampshire, staying with a friend in Hamilton, so Patrick dug up more plants that evening and the woman returned the next day to pick them up. The same woman returned last year, but Patrick had no Trillium available that year; this year, she called in May to ask about it. Patrick had a bumper crop of Trillium this year and the woman drove from New Hampshire and picked up her order bright and early on Saturday!

The plant sale was another success this year, thanks to the dedication of Patrick, his customers, and other museum staff. If you want to learn more about the Heritage Plant Sale or the heritage gardens, you can stop by Thrall Pharmacy at the museum.

Feeding the Pharmacy Leeches

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Interpretive Projects Coordinator

Before talking to Patrick (the museum’s Pharmacy Supervisor) a few weeks ago, I hadn’t thought about the fact that the leeches he keeps in Dr. Thrall’s Pharmacy need to be fed. Because we do not actually treat patients with leeches at the museum, every few months we provide the leeches with something non-human to eat. Patrick has found that chicken liver makes a tasty meal for the leeches. I visited the Pharmacy on the day that Patrick fed the leeches; a group of schoolchildren was in the building on a fieldtrip and also had the opportunity to watch. The leeches latched themselves onto the liver and fed for about half an hour. A helpful tip from Patrick: if you are ever trying to remove a leech from yourself or someone else, try sprinkling salt on it or touching it with something hot. Nineteenth-century doctors used leeches to remove poisons and impurities in the blood, which they believed were the cause of a variety of diseases. By 1845, fewer doctors were still using leeches based on new medical information. Leeches aren’t just a medical tool of the past, though; today doctors have renewed their use for leeches to help remove blood from black eyes and other bruises, as well as in microsurgery like reattaching fingers to thin the blood and prevent clots. To see more of the leeches, check out our Facebook photo album, or – even better – stop by and see them for yourself at the pharmacy. You can also learn more about leeches and current medical practices from the company that supplies the pharmacy, Leeches U.S.A.

Pharmacy Preparations

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Interpretive Projects Coordinator

Patrick MacGregor, our Pharmacy Supervisor, is making indoor and outdoor preparations for the new season in Thrall’s Pharmacy. His most recent excitement was the arrival last week of his annual batch of leeches (stay tuned for a more in-depth post on the leeches). And now that the pharmacy garden has reappeared from under the snow banks, it is time to start prepping the garden for the growing season. The herbs in the pharmacy garden are almost all perennials, so Patrick won’t be planting much this year. He still has plenty of work to do, though! He’ll be raking the paths, resetting and repairing the brick edges, and labeling the herbs with signs around the garden. Patrick researched garden signs in the book Gardening for Ladies and Companion to the Flower Garden and used grant funding from the New York Council on the Humanities to create signs that look like they did in the 1840s.

left: From Gardening for Ladies and Companion to the Flower Garden, Mrs. Loudon, ed. Andrew Jackson Downing (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1843).