We’ve got­ten into the habit of vis­it­ing How­ell’s Liv­ing His­to­ry Farm up in Mer­cer Coun­ty, N.J., a few times a year as part of home­school­er group trips. In the past, we’ve cut ice, tapped trees for maple syrup, and seen the sheep shear­ing and card­ing. Today we saw the var­i­ous stages of wheat – from plant­i­ng, to har­vest­ing, thresh­ing, win­now­ing, grind­ing, and bak­ing. I love that there’s such a wide vocab­u­lary of spe­cif­ic lan­guage for all this – words I bare­ly know out­side of bib­li­cal para­bles (“Oh wheat from chaff!”) and that there’s great vin­tage machin­ery (How­ell’s oper­a­tions are set around the turn of the twen­ti­eth century).

Grind­ing the wheat 

I just love the let­ter­ing on the bot­tom of the grinder 

Gre­go­ry on the crank 

Fran­cis’s turn 

A horse- or steam-powered thresh­er had great lettering 

Anoth­er piece of equip­ment had a great font. 

Detail of the grinder 

Stove in the kitchen 

In the kitchen we made bread 

Fields around the farm. 

Wheat. This is a spe­cial kind of spiked wheat that dis­cour­ages deer. 

Hors­es com­ing back from the fresh­ly plowed field.