At Wessels Living History Farm, we bring stories to life! Here are just a few examples of the memories that we represent on the farm:
School Days, Jean Lamp
“…Our desks had a hole on top in the right hand corner to hold a bottle of ink. We would write cursive or print using an ink pen with a pointed blade and then we dipped it into the bottle… We had a large globe of the earth… hanging from the ceiling. We could lower and raise the globe when we needed it.”
Dancin’, Millie Opitz & Carla Due
“I’d rather dance than eat… ‘cus, you get that music a-goin’, how’re you gonna sit still? It’s impossible! Absolutely impossible!” Millie
“Before they started putting the hay in, if they had a real nice barn they would have a barn dance up in the haymow…” Carla
Threshing, Jean Lamp
“To thresh the grain you would cut the wheat stalk with a binder that would tie a bunch of wheat stalks together called a bundle… It looked like a small teepee. We would love to play hide-and-seek in them. Boy! Grandma would get angry with us for hiding in those shocks because we would knock off a lot of kernels by doing that even though we didn’t mean to…”
Victory Gardens, Kelly Holthus
“…And, so, another part of the government effort was – they called them Victory Gardens. In the cities, and even in the country, they wanted everybody to have their own garden, to raise their own produce and maybe have enough that somebody that didn’t have access to a garden had produce and things, because it wasn’t available in the stores… It was a great morale thing. And for young people like me, it was, you know, I could do my part. I was a part of the effort.”
