The 900-acre Carriage Hill Metropark, just north of I-70 on the east side of Ohio 201, is part of the Five Rivers Metropark System, and includes Carriage Hill Farm.

 

The farm is a working farm set in the 1880s, staffed with historical interpreters in period costume and comprised of several buildings dating from the 1830s to the 1870s equipped with the materials and tools of farming of the period. It's on rolling, partly forested land.

 

After a few hours walking around downtown on concrete, it was great to be away from the noise, walking in tall grass, feeling the breeze, and hearing birds.

 

 

This house is a log cabin that was sided over in 1876.

 

 

 

 

 

The wood shop is equipped with tools used to repair, restore and construct farm buildings.

 

 

A shed on the end of the wood shop houses the Empire portable steam engine used to power the threshing machine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blacksmith shop has all the tools needed to make hinges, latches, and parts/repairs for farm tools and implements.

 

 

By far the biggest Catalpa tree I've ever seen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer kitchen and wash house. In summer, cooking was done in this open, screened building instead of in the house's kitchen. A cast-iron cookstove in an adjoining room took the place of the fireplace for cooking.

 

 

 

 

Brick ovens were heated by building a wood fire inside. Wood was burned until the bricks got hot enough that the soot was burned off, and then the wood and ashes were raked out and the goods to be baked were put in. The things that took longest to bake, like bread, went in first, and things that baked quickly, like cookies, went in last. Each item was then taken out when it was done. It took practice to get it right.

 

 

 

 

Hay mower

 

Hay rake

 

Water wagon to supply water to a steam engine. In a day's threshing, a steam engine can consume a thousand gallons of water or more, and it was often the job of some of the boys to take the wagon to a pond, creek or well and fill it with water, and then transfer the water to holding tanks on or near the steam engine.

 

Percheron draft horses

 

 

For some jobs, mules are better than horses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, I'll be damned!  And my mother doesn't live that far from that place and I've never been!

I think my kindergarden class took a field trip here!

 

Nice photos, I like the windmill.

I'm ashamed to say I have never been there, but like the rest of the Metroparks system, it looks like they've done a great job with it.  I should take my dad there next time he is down this way.

 

Also, nice to see the New Idea manure spreader in there.  New Idea was based in Mercer County for about a century--nearly all of those years in the village of Coldwater.  Like much of the agricultural implement industry, New Idea went through a number of  consolidations and buyouts over the years and is currently owned by the agriculture conglomerate AGCO.  I had several family members that worked at the Coldwater factory, but like so much manufacturing in Ohio, the Coldwater plant was closed by AGCO in 1999.  Developers have been dividing up the 1.4 million sq. ft. facility in Coldwater for reuse.

New Idea was a popular machinery line for a long time. They had a pretty full line, but the most popular items where I grew up were manure spreaders, hay mowers, and corn planters and pickers. The Amish have some New Idea corn pickers that they pull with horses. I don't know if they were factory built that way, or if they were modifications by a local mechanic; instead of being driven from a tractor's power take-off, they're powered from a large ground wheel, like a binder. They generally use eight-horse hitches to pull them, and they keep two teams in the field and trade off every half hour or so to let the horses rest.

 

One large farmer near Harlan, Indiana, runs two pickers during fall harvest. That's 32 horses in the field, sixteen working and sixteen resting, and it keeps a bunch of boys busy watering them and looking after them.

Neat Rob.  Alas, I have not been there either.