Greenfield Village (7/8/2015)

Today brought a trip to Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, "Walking through the impressive Greenfield Village is like stepping into a living museum. Three centuries of history are played out before your eyes in an 80-acre (32.3-hectare) model village. There are authentic historic structures and people strolling on the footpath wearing period costume. See Model T cars and horses pull wagons along the street. Started by famed automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, Greenfield Village has over 26 million artifacts and 83 historic buildings that are organized into seven districts."

The village is broken up into sections:  Josephine Ford Plaza, Working Farms, Liberty Craftworks, Henry Ford's Model T, Railroad Junction, Main Street, Edison at Work, Porches & Parlors, and Walnut Grove. At Collins' suggestion, we all boarded the train to get an overview of the park and figure out how to tackle our exploration.  We were the first train riders of the day, so Collins borrowed a rag to wipe the suet off our seats, but we were "sprinkled" with suet throughout the train ride.

It is common to encounter bicycle and unicycle riders, Model T's, horse drawn carriages and Model Ts on the roads as we walked.

We started down Main Street, going in and out of almost every building.  I'll post a few pictures from this area.

Heinz House (of Heinz 57 Varieties)

Joe stylin' at Cohen Millinery

Then we ventured into Edison at Work.

We continued on into Porches & Parlors, where we found our cohorts having lunch.  (of course, we joined them)

We caught one of the shows, "How I Got Over,"" inspiring stories, songs and slavery narratives," which was very entertaining. 

Also in this section was the Farris Windmill, the oldest windmill in the U.S.  This one was transplanted from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

We caught one family enjoying the lunch they had just cooked on the wood cookstove.  They were having lamb as their meat, soup, salad, several different vegetables, and they had a cake in the oven for later.

We walked through this Cottswold Cottage, an English cottage and garden.

There were homes of several famous people here:  Robert Frost, Noah Webster, Thomas Edison.  We checked out Noah Webster's place.

The two buildings that were slave quarters were made of brick, which was unusual.  They were part of the Hermitage Plantation, near Savannah, Georgia, because brick-making was an important industry on the Hermitage Plantation and they could get the materials at no cost.

Our next stop was outside a school, where Laura Ingalls (from Little House on the Prairie) was telling her story.

Then we went through the Railroad Junction, where we viewed a railroad turntable demonstration and the roundhouse.

Then we worked our way over to the Liberty Craftworks where several different shops had artists or workers plying their trade, all very interesting demonstrations.

Glass Blowing

Weaving Shop

Pottery Shop

Huge kiln outside pottery shop

Print Shop

Tin Shop

This was a pretty amazing place.  The exhibits were authentic in most cases, not replicas, that had been taken apart on site and put back together here in Greenfield Village.  All the buildings (houses and shops) had guides inside to tell you all about the place and answer any questions.  It was done almost to a Disney perfection.  Quite a collection to Mr. Ford had gathered.  I heard one tour person say there were two buildings he thought they still needed.  One was a barber shop but I can't remember the second one.  We didn't see every single building, but we saw most of them. 

It was a lot of walking, and a very chilly day.  I was glad to have my sweater.  We finished up about 3:30-4:00 and headed back to the campground, all worn out.  But we have to rest up, because tomorrow we have more adventures to take on.