Kim 365

For the past few years we have been members of the Western Development Museum (WDM for short). We purchase a yearly pass for our family and this allows us to visit the museum anytime throughout the year, including the time before Christmas when they host the Festival of Trees, and Pion-Era, their annual summer festival. For the first time since we’ve had our membership we were not busy on Pion-Era weekend so we finally went to check it out, and I am so glad we did. It was so much fun!

The kids all had special bingo cards that if they filled with stamps throughout the grounds, they would be entered to win a prize package. This was a sneaky way for event organizers to get feedback from the survey they printed on the back of the card, and it was also and excellent way of motivating the kids to check out all that there was to see and do.

This is a saw that cuts large blocks of wood into thin shingles.

Here we saw a rock crusher in action. Rocks were loaded into the bottom, crushed, carried up the conveyor belt and dropped into the wagon. I always find these old belt-driven machines fascinating – the ingenuity of machinery during this period of history is so interesting to see in action.

This goat at the petting zoo was eager for attention. Don’t you love his horns?

The kids tried their hands at washing clothes with a washboard. The big boys assured me that they’re thankful we have automatic washers and dryers today, which makes their task of doing laundry much easier than it would have been 100 years ago!

Markus is a rockstar at milking the fake cow!

This little train was one of the highlights of the kids’ day!

Bailey’s favourite part was the pony rides: she went three times! Amazingly to me, she is quite comfortable around horses. I was horse crazy until adolescence made me boy crazy, so it’s very sweet to see Bailey enjoying horses too.

A beautiful team pulling the wagon rides.

Me and my sweetie! While the kids were enjoying their train ride I pulled my phone out and said it was selfie time. Clay asked, “Since when do we selfie?” Since now! I know I am absent in so many photos and I want to be more willing to get my face in front of the camera. I want to be able to look back and see that we were enjoying this day right along with the kids.

Bailey and I took in a fashion show on the Boomtown stage. It was so interesting to see the evolution of fashion over the past 70 years. My favourite outfit was a dress from the 1940’s, it was so feminine and sophisticated. Unfortunately it is not pictured here, and I know this photo is not great but it’s the best I could do with an iPhone in the spot I was sitting in. It was also neat to see some of Clay’s aunt’s fashions from the 70’s and 80’s in the collection: she is a curator at the museum and some of her old clothes made it onto the runway!

We finished the afternoon outside for an old fashioned threshing demonstration. They showcased the different methods of harvesting as technology progressed from using man power to horsepower, then steam and gas machinery.
Here they are pitching the sheaves of grain into the wagon.

It is difficult to see what’s going on here, but the steam tractor is attached with a belt to the threshing machine, and the grain is being loaded in one end, and at the other the grain is pouring into a wagon and the chaff blows away.

I was so pumped to see this because I have amazing memories from grade 3 when my favourite teacher took our class on a field trip to her friend’s farm to witness this process. We rode on the wagon and were up close to the action as the old tractor rumbled, and men with a commitment to heritage and passing on this piece of history involved us in what life was like for farmers in the early 1900’s. This is when history comes alive to a child, and it certainly made an impact on me! I hope some of that wonder of discovering days gone by happened for my kids today too.

The afternoon closed with the Parade of Power – tractors, cars, motorized wagons, and men and women proud to show off their restorations of the past.

There is so much I didn’t include in photos, like delicious homemade bread slathered in butter and strawberry jam for only 25 cents a slice, Saskatoon berry ice cream sundaes, cranking homemade ice cream, rope making, three legged and potato sack races, and so much more. I don’t know how I’ve lived here my whole life and only experienced this today! If you have the chance to go, do it!