Camp

Last week was my first week of camp at OSV. It was certainly different from what I'm used to but it was good to be working with kids again. For this first week we only had two camps running, so there were only 14 kids, also, I was assigned to be a floater helping out both camps. That pretty much meant that since OSV isn't really set up as a camp it was my job to make sure supplies arrived where they needed to be for programs and were put away afterward. One day I was waiting for a group to exchange items in the general store and one of the girls asked me, "Why do you keep following us around?" I said I was making all the magic happen for camp. And then that's what I did. As soon as the kids left, I collected their trade items from the interpreter to return to the museum ed building: functioning general store open for trade one minute; historic building just for show the next! It was pretty cute/funny.
I know all the work I did as a floater was really appreciated and necessary but I'm really looking forward to getting to work with a group of campers next time. The best parts of my week were times when I got to interact with the kids, either playing with them at lunch, or just sitting to talk during snack/project time at the end of the day when my work was finished.

Mud

Back in the garden. After two days of rain, it was cold and misty out yesterday but perfect weather for weeding. It’s good to have wet soil while weeding because it keeps the crops happy through the trauma of having their roots a little disturbed. Sorta like giving a kid an ice cream cone after a scraped knee I guess. Also, it made the ground nice and soft and easy to poke around in for roots of the weeds. I weeded by hand in the morning and got covered in mud! My dress was too long and I spent the morning in fear that I would trip and land face first in the carrot bed. In the afternoon I switched to weeding with a hoe a border along the main walkway which had grown out of control. That was pretty much the whole workday. Not very exciting but it was satisfying to have gotten so much done at the end of the day. As I was leaving, the girls at the dye station called me over to join them in roasting marshmallows over their fire pit, after closing time of course. It was funny to see the mix of people in modern and 19^th century clothes eating marshmallows and hanging out. 

Help! It's dark in here!

Back in the school house and much less fun this time, I’m sad to report. It was rainy and cold and there was only one visiting school group who didn’t even make it up to the school house. I sat in the dark by myself for most of the day. In the morning I attempted to wind a tangled skein of yarn into a ball. In the afternoon I found a book to read by a window. I escaped at 3:40 when the trickle of visitors to my door had ended and went up to Freeman to help Sue feed Button her bottle. Bess rejected Button so we needed to bottle feed her sooner than usual. Sue & I figured out that I was her daughter’s camp counselor a few years ago, which was exciting. It’s pretty cool to meet a parent of one of your campers a few years later and find out how much their child had talked about you at home J

Finally Freeman!

 Finally in the Freeman Farmhouse, the part I was most excited about! We baked bread pudding which was delicious, I highly recommend it! There was a great group of women and girls there on Wednesday which made it extra fun. Sue, Victoria (both staff), Rebecca and Haley (High School Interns) are all fantastic. It was raining all day so we had an especially slow afternoon. We all sat in the parlor together, knitting and chatting and making plans for future scrapbooking parties. Altogether a delightful day!

Weeding Onions

I worked in the kitchen garden today. Laura came in on her day off to help in hopes that she will be there when Buttercup has her calf. Bess had a calf last Friday who, after a few days of hemming and hawing, has finally been named Button because she is cute as a…. We were again working without someone to shadow but at least it wasn’t Laura’s very first day. We were able to answer most of the visitors’ questions and decided the safest thing to do would be to weed and water. No thinning for us! We didn’t want to do something more complex and ruin the crop. It was a nice day out and we even had a few kids ask to help us which was pretty cute. By 3:30, we had weeded an entire onion bed and were feeling pretty hot and tired so we spent the rest of the afternoon inside knitting and getting to know the staff.

In da School House!

My first day interpreting! I started in the school house today. In the interview process I was told that I would be trained, then shadow an experienced interpreter in each area before working with visitors on my own. That didn’t happen. At morning check-in, Kim realized I was on my own for my first day! I might not have worried so much if she hadn’t seemed so concerned but I survived and actually had a lot of fun! Anne was great and walked to the school house with me before opening to help set up and give me a quick refresher. Today was our last busy day of visiting school groups. It was fun to see the little school house full of children and to get to talk to them about the ways school was different in the 1830s.

Long, Wet Week

It’s been raining this week which I think is great. I love the rain. Most everyone else, though, doesn’t seem to feel the same. It has also been a very long week, hence my lack of posts lately. Sorry! I’ve been getting home exhausted, just ready to eat some dinner, relax and get some sleep.

Here’s the rundown of my week:

Monday- Museum Education. I greeted buses in the morning and spent the afternoon working on projects to get ready for camp. It was pretty stressful because even though Kathy had tried explaining them to us last week, once we got started working we found we had a lot of questions but it was Kathy’s day off.

Tuesday- Garden Training. This is when rain started being no fun: no one else wanted to be outside in it. So garden training turned into tours of the gardens and hidden supply stashes with most of the explanations done inside. There was so much to remember, I’m glad I don’t need to! Most of the training covered the center village gardens which are mostly flowers. I’m not scheduled to work in those and the more I learned about flowers, the more I was convinced that they are generally more effort than they’re worth! Haha! I guess it’s good I’m working in a kitchen garden and it will be great to be able to explain the differences.

Wednesday- Back to Museum Ed for more of the same. We were able to talk to Kathy and get some clarification on our projects, which was great. Also, the woman who taught our garden training lent me a book about bugs and gardening which was a perfect resource for my “Good Bug, Bad Bug” project.

Thursday- School house and Knitting Training. We spent the morning learning about the school house. It was mostly reading but it was nice that Anne let us read on our own and then come back with questions. In one training, our trainer read the handouts aloud to us and I really preferred Anne’s approach. In the afternoon we practiced knitting. Of the 6 of us, only 2 had never knit before so it was nice for them to have so much attention from Anne to help them learn while the rest of us worked on our samplers. The downside was that we were working with size 0 needles! I’ve never worked on anything smaller than a 3 before so this was a challenge. I was so impressed with the girls knitting for the first time to be learning on such small needles. We need to complete samplers of at least 6 specified stitches before we can work on projects. It was slow work with such small needles but would you believe that after 4 hours, I went straight to the local yarn store to get myself supplies to learn to knit socks? I felt like I needed to knit something for me in a fun color after handling the itchy wool and doing boring squares. I’m working on a pair of rainbow socks at home. In the village, I have to use village yarn and needles and work on period appropriate projects while will become OSV property. The first project I get after my sampler is a pair of fingerless gloves.  

Today was the rainiest day. I forgot to mention that yesterday was beautiful. Today, I was lucky to have kept my rain coat and umbrella in the car because it was nice out when I left my sister’s but by time I got to OSV it was raining steadily. We greeted busses and it was one of the busiest days I’ve seen. There were probably almost 2000 students here today! All my bus driver tickets and maps got soggy, not to mention my pants! Most of the teachers and bus drivers were patient and polite though which was a huge help. Sometimes drivers can be pretty rude and it always makes my job much more pleasant when everyone’s in a good mood.

This afternoon I worked on projects and finished a few which was nice. Next week I’m interpreting in the village all week! I’m so excited!! For now though, I’m hoping for a quiet and relaxing weekend.