Harvest Fall Festival at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum

On Sunday, despite a being sick with a rotten cold, I went to the Glengarry Pioneer Museum for a few hours to check out their Harvest Fall Festival. I’m so glad I did, it was lots and lots of fun, interesting, and informative.

I watched a butter-making demonstration by this lady who had 4 milk cows and makes all her own butter, cheese, and yoghurt by hand. I got to help churn the cream into butter:

And we also got to taste the resulting product. Wow! It was like how a carrot pulled fresh from the garden tastes more “carroty” than the ones you buy from the grocery store, this butter was so very creamy and flavourful. I’ve never had butter that tasted anything like it.

When someone asked the lady doing the demonstration, “Do you sell butter?” she replied, “No, that would be illegal. But there’s a pile of my business cards with my contact information on the table there.” I love it out here!

As well as butter-making there were demonstrations by local craftspeople: a blacksmith using the museum’s forge, a harness-maker, a cobbler making shoes, a harness-maker, a tinsmith, a beekeeper, a canoe-maker, and others I’m forgetting.

There was a horse-power parade with horses pulling antique wagons, ridden by people in period costume.

There were a trio of re-enactors dressed in authentic Glengarry Highland Regiment uniforms, who had set up a period camp, complete with tents and a campfire, who explained what military life was like in the mid-1800s and demonstrated their muskets.

There was a petting zoo, and a quilting bee, and a town cryer, and a old-fashioned threshing machine threshing wheat, and lots of people (children included) wandering around in period costume, just for the fun of it.

Ontario’s oldest continually-licensed bar was open for business and selling beer, but due to the cold (and the fact that I’m still driving on a provisional license) I didn’t have one. Next year.

There was a native Mi’kmaq man and his wife, who were talking about and demonstrating many aspects of Native life both before and after the settlers arrived. I got part of my right arm painted with authentic Mi’kmak war paint: red and yellow ochre, and coal black, applied with bear grease. Despite having given the dog a bath last night, there’s still a red-tinged patch on my arm!

There was a sheep-to-sweater display, which included shearing, carding wool, spinning, and knitting. The shearer demonstrated the use of antique hand cranked clippers for a few minutes, before finishing the job with modern electric clippers. (Yes, that thing that looks like a big wooly sac is actually a live sheep.)

I got a quick drop-spindle lesson, as well as instructions on how to make one of this lady’s most ingeniously-designed drop-spindles for myself:

All-in-all a great day out, and next year I shall be sure to announce it well in advance so that folks can come out for it if they’d like.