Let's Be Farmers: The Little Bliss List

As a fun end to summer, we stepped back-in-time to become 1860's farmers!

Juliana and I visited the Oliver Kelley Farm with our good friends Sarah, Annelia and Hannah.  The Oliver Kelley Farm is a working 1860's farm that is part of the Minnesota Historical Society.

(All the photos below are from the Oliver Kelley website because I forgot my camera.)

At the farm, Juliana and Annelia fed the pigs.

The piglets are now quite large.  And hungry!  The girls had to walk into the pen filled with 12 pigs to dump slop into the feed troughs.  Yummy!


I helped train the 16 week-old calves how to become well-behaved oxen.

It takes 4 years to train oxen and you must start early when they are 100 pounds instead waiting till they're full grown and weight 2,000 pounds.

Here are some full-grown oxen working in the field.

The girls had fun playing with the kittens in the barn.  The Oliver Kelley barn is the oldest still-standing barn in Minnesota.

They wanted to take the kittens home (and the farmer said we could.)  But, both of our current house cats would be quite upset with a new addition.  The farm kitties stayed at the farm.


In the house, the girls chopped onions for pork dumplings.

I would like to know why Juliana will chop onions at the Oliver Kelley Farm but not at home!

The girls also helped weed the huge garden.
Again, why there and not at home?

All I can say to that is . . . Teens!


Going on our field trip back-in-time was a great way to say goodbye to summer!


Next week:  Hello High School!