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Most agricultural
recreations portray the plantations of the prosperous, a few represent the
freeholders’ farms but far too few let you see the far more common dirt
farmer’s homestead. This deprives today's visitors of a view of life
in colonial times---we don’t see how the majority of people actually lived.
This oversight is corrected at The Claude Moore Colonial Farm at Turkey Run
which provides a glimpse of just such a low-income farm of the 18th century.
This living
history farm is run the way it would have been more than two centuries ago in
the 1770s. It is easy to believe that you have stepped back in time when the
guide, dressed in appropriate colonial work clothes, explains that his work in
the fields prevented him from putting in the board floor. The woman of the
house sweeps the dirt floor with a hand-bound straw broom and says she hopes
to get the board floor in soon. She is also likely to complain that the cabin
was built in such a hurry the logs were not stripped and the mud mortar is
crumbling where the logs meet so it doesn’t provide enough protection from the
elements.
The one-room
cabin is surrounded by fields of tobacco and corn, which the farmer plants,
hoes and harvests. Tobacco is grown in hopes of raising a little money.
Subsistence crops like beans, pumpkins, squash, corn and melons feed the
family. Various foods are dried, smoked or salted to make the lean wintertime
a little easier. The farm has livestock appropriate to the period: chickens,
hogs and horses.
You can watch the
never-ending tasks that made up life on a colonial farm. Soap had to be made
from tallow and cloth from sheep’s wool. Animal skins were tanned to make
shoes; buttons were made from bone or deer antlers. Water was fetched daily
from a nearby stream and gourds hollowed out for serving bowls and utensils.
Although the farmer and his wife only come in by the day, they present a
masterful illusion that they actually live here and that you have stepped into
a time machine and have been transported back to colonial Virginia.
Just inside the
entrance to the Claude Moore Colonial Farm several picnic tables invite you to
sylvan spots. The farm is open April through mid-December, Wednesday through
Sunday from 10:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. Admission is charged. During the farm
season, staff present seven “Food Preservation” programs focusing on such
topics as: salting fish, making cheese and butter, herbs, pickling produce,
drying vegetables, smoking meat and others. They also host three 18th-century
Market Fairs on the third full weekend of May, July and October. There are
several other special farm family events; for a schedule call (703) 442-7557.
Directions: From
I-495/95, the Capital Beltway, take Exit 13, Route 193, Georgetown Pike east
toward Langley for 2 1/3 miles. Turn left at the sign for the Claude Moore
Colonial Farm.
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TRAVEL
WRITERS WANTED
FREE
trial lesson in new
"WRITING TO
PUBLISH WORKSHOP."
Send us
an
email for details. Publication
is guaranteed for those
accepted in program. Instructor is
former president of the Society of
American Travel Writers.
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