LIVERMORE – The fall harvest is going on at Norlands, and the public is invited to see another era in its prime.
The Washburn-Norlands Living History Center is celebrating a fall harvest as it was in the late 1880s. The celebration will be 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, at the center on Norlands Road.
Former Norlands’ administrative coordinator Nancey Drinkwine, who was training Priscilla Beedy in the position Friday, said the foliage is beautiful and the fields are in the process of being harvested. The celebration goes back to a time when the harvest was not just work but also for community and social activities.
People shared tasks with each other, families helping each other, Drinkwine said. They worked, they ate and then they had fun.
“We’re trying to celebrate it,” Drinkwine said.
Admission to the festival is $1.
There will be scarecrow decorating and a jack-o’-lantern decorating contest as well as enjoying the bountiful harvest with children bobbing for apples and enjoying the cider that comes from a press, she said.
The 3rd Maine Regiment will set up a Civil War encampment behind the library between the mansion. Members of The Ancient Ones, a group that re-enacts the period between 1620 and 1840, will also be there.
Other activities will include hayrides, a farmers’ scoot contest that uses horses and an obstacle course, a bean supper, a barn dance and music on the piazza. The dinner is $5 for adults and $3 for children under 10.
There will also be select programs in the schoolhouse and library, tours of the mansion and a concert in the meeting house given by Jerry Ellis. Some of these activities will be offered for a fee, Drinkwine said.
The food vendors will include Val Nichols’ sausage wagon, homemade doughnuts by Edith Ellis, and the Lucianos of Bear Mountain Dairy Bar churning ice cream.
There will also be an apple-pie baking contest. Apple pie judging will take place at 11:30 a.m. and the jack-o’-lantern judging will be 3:30 p.m. People who bring either a pie or jack-o’-lantern in time for judging will be admitted free of charge.
More information and directions are available on Norlands’ Web site www.norlands.org or call 897-4366.
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