GREENFIELD VILLAGE DATE DAY

Matt decided two weekends ago that him and I needed a date day.  Other then going out to eat of late there hasn't been much we have wanted to do.  We haven't been interested in seeing any movies of late, at least not until Harry Potter comes out.  My friends' band hasn't  been playing locally so we haven't been able to hang out with them.  So Matt decided it was time to remedy the fact that I have never been to Greenfield Village or to the Henry Ford Museum.  Our focus for this trip was just to visit the Village.  It was a beautiful day out with temperatures in the low 70's.  Great weather for a lot of walking because this place is HUGE.  The tickets are a bit pricey at $22 pp for adults, but we used a coupon out of the Entertainment Book that saved us roughly $5.50 a ticket.  We did end up turning the tickets in for credit towards a membership before we left.  If you live close, the memberships are definitely the best bargains and include admission to the Village as well as the museum and also including free parking and discounts in the stores and IMAX theater.

Our first stop was to the working farm.  This was probably my favorite section of the Village.  The farm was divided into the house, barn, pens/pasture and garden areas.  The workers were just finishing up with lunch in the house and appeared to enjoying sitting back and chatted with visitors.  We discussed the types of crops and livestock they raised.  They raise various heritage breeds.  I'd heard of heritage seeds for gardening but found it interesting that people are now trying to bring back older breeds of livestock.  The heritage sheep they are raising are wrinkled merino sheep.  I've knitted countless merino wool socks so I knew about merino sheep, but never knew there was an older breed that had wrinkles all over their bodies.  The wrinkles have been bred out of them to make it easier to sheer them but are now being bred back into them.  Like heritage vegetables, heritage breeds of animals are often more disease resistant and hardier then their modern day counterparts.  They also raise chickens, turkeys, and pigs.  There was a woman in the family room of the house and her and I discussed battenburg lace, tatting, and knitting.  I found it amusing when she told me I should come work there.  Of course it might have to do with my explaining what tatting was to her since she'd never heard of it.

We spent the day enjoying various areas of the Village.  We especially enjoyed watching the glassblowers.  I was disappointed that they didn't have more of a demonstration with the weavers.  There was no spinning of the wool which surprised me although they had a carding shop.  The carding shop didn't have any wool so they weren't able to do any demonstrations of the carding equipment either.  The Thomas Edison Menlo Laboratory was another interesting stop that took us a while to get through.  I'm not sure the size of the Village but in the 5+ hours we were there we got roughly only about 2/3 of the way through the Village.  I had hoped to take tea in the Tea Shoppe but we never got to that section.  There was a tavern of sorts where they had beer, hard cider, and home style sodas and I can highly recommend both the cream soda and the hard cider.  We took a brief snack break and enjoyed watching the birds swoop into the building hunting pretzels and such on the ground.  The stores throughout the Village were great to browse in.  They sell various items including some items that are made in the Village like the pottery, glass and woven fabric.

I'm looking forward to going back and finishing our visit of the Village as well as exploring the museum.  Matt says they decorate the Village for Halloween so our plans are to visit again and see it decked out for my favorite holiday and also for Christmas.  There are events nearly weekly.  The Local Roots Blues, Brews & Ales is scheduled for August.