The Mill

Last Sunday we ventured out to one of our favorite little field trip areas: the Graue Mill. To our suprise, the Cowen family was already out there when we arrived. Dixie was dressed in a little praire girl hat for the occasion.

Here they are: the Cowen ladies. The funny part was that I was wearing the same maternity dress that Mary had worn the last time we went to the mill with them, just a few weeks before Dixie was born. The NOT funny part was that the temperature had decided to climb to 99 degrees on Sunday, which I had not expected. I will spare you a picture of a hot sweaty pregnant lady wearing Mary's old dress.

However, I won't spare you this cutey picture of Cecilia, Sammy, and Claire dressed as cute little Civil War time kids. The Graue Mill was a stop on the underground railroad, so they have lots of fun stuff from that time period in the museum.

Look at this little soldier. I can't believe he won't be my youngest anymore in a few DAYS!

Matt did a little dress-up too. This part of the museum was so hot though that we were all eager to get out of costume pretty soon.

The water wheel.

The grist mill.

Claire got to help take the corn off the husk before grinding it.

But the main attraction this day was the sheep. They were having a sheep-sheering demonstration!

The sheep were so compliant while they were sheered. Then again, so would I be if I was wearing a wool coat on a 100 degree day.

We all felt cooler just looking at the sheep without his wool coat.

Then we got to see demonstrations of the rest of the process. This is the wool after it has been carded.

Carded is when you take these two paddle brushes and brush the wool out straight to make it easier to spin into yarn. Then this lady spun it on a drop spindle to make it into yarn.

Then they all got to help the weaver lady weave the wool. Sammy even got into it. Have you read Pelle's New Suit,  by Elsa Beskow? Sam loves that book, and this was like a live demonstration of the story.

At the end of the day, we went home with our usual 5 lb bag of ground corn meal and made corn bread for dinner that night. It was good, but I kinda wanted to eat nothing but ice chips that night because of the heat. This is our first year without central air conditioning. Needless to say, Matt got online and ordered 3 AC units immediately and they came Tuesday...thank goodness. I was a pretty grumpy pregnant lady that night. I'm due a week from yesterday though, so here's to 6 more days! I'm having Sam's 5th birthday party at the park this Saturday though, so, even though I'd love to go into labor early, I need to make it for at least 48 more hours. We'll see!