Passing Down Skills: Apprenticeships

Landis Valley just finished up our Harvest Days Festival, where, among other demonstrations, visitors could watch skilled tradespeople at work.  These demonstrations were stationed against a backdrop of machines both old and new that were designed to take the drudgery out of agricultural labor, freeing skilled workers for other tasks.  Some of the machines were simple and visitors had fun figuring out how they worked.  Longtime Landis Valley volunteer and retired teacher Larry Hess was in his element, answering questions about the mechanics involved and how he tweaked some things to make the machine presentable to the public.  An example of these is the candle wicking machine at right.

The newer machines brought over by local dealers Binkley & Hurst, Deere Country, Hoober’s, and Messick’s were huge and complex.  There was no figuring out the communication between sensors and GPS through the onboard computers.  Adults just looked on in awe of their size as children ran from compartment to compartment within the behemoths.  The thing is, though:  nothing is permanent and eventually these machines will need maintenance and repair, too.

This backdrop is perfect to introduce a new registered apprenticeship program sponsored by the PA Department of Agriculture (PDA).  Today, as part of the Agriculture and Food Careers Week in PA (Oct. 8-14), speakers with the PDA will roll out the Agriculture Equipment Service Technician apprenticeship at Landis Valley.  

According to the PDA’s program:  “The PDA had previously identified a short- and long-term shortage of skilled technicians in the industry and the absence of training programs for the occupation currently.  Four dealers and one original equipment manufacturer from Lancaster County subsequently formed a consortium led by the Northeast Equipment Dealers Association to form a joint apprenticeship program that was approved by the PA Apprenticeship Council in September.  Further, the apprenticeship program has developed a connection with ten high schools in Lancaster and Chester Counties which will offer a pre-apprenticeship through their existing career and technical programming so that graduates will have advance standing if they are hired as apprentices.”  

The event was from 10 a.m. to noon and provided some details of the apprenticeship and where it will help alleviate the overall workforce crisis in the agriculture and food industries and the need to stay globally competitive using technology.  Notable speakers included:  Ag Secretary Russell Redding; Deputy Secretary for Workforce Development Eileen Cipriani (PA Dept. of Labor and Industry); Neil Fellenbaum, President of the PA Association of Agriculture Educators; Landis Valley site director Jim McMahon; and many more.

A Long History of Skills Training

Apprenticeship blossomed out of a society that made things by hand and needed highly skilled workers to make shoes, nails, flatware, clothing, guns, wheels, and buildings, to name a few.  An apprentice was expected to work very hard for long hours over a period of years (seven, on average), performing important, though menial, tasks for his master.  However, in return, he got the chance to watch and learn not only his master’s techniques and tricks of the trade but, just as important, to learn how the business was run.  He also got a basic education and tools or clothing when his apprenticeship was complete.  Many apprentices completed a project that showcased their skills.

Brokered by the apprentice’s parents, the youth entered into a contract with his master and both were expected to behave properly during the course of the term.  Oftentimes, contracts stipulated that the apprentice was to refrain from gambling, fornication and/or matrimony, visiting ale houses, and spending or lending his master’s goods.  The master provided room and board to his apprentice and promised to teach him the arts and “mysteries” of the craft (which the apprentice was not so sell, either).  

There are notable examples of broken contracts.  For example, Benjamin Franklin was indentured for a 9-year term as a printing apprentice to his brother, James, and broke it early because he and his brother quarreled and James sometimes beat Ben.  Ben added, “Thinking my apprenticeship very tedious, I was continuously wishing for some opportunity of shortening it.”

Changing Training in a Changing World

With industrialization in the 19th century came a dramatic shift in labor training that continues today.  When once a worker needed years to learn to make things from start to finish, with mechanization he would only need to learn part of production process and his training ended after only a few months.  Employers stopped paying for room, clothing, and board and started paying wages on a graduated scale.  This training was not as formal as it is today, and most skilled workers immigrated to America while people learning in America mainly learned on their own by persistently watching, asking advice of co-workers, and through trial and error.

In 1911, Wisconsin was the first state to enact legislation organizing a system of apprenticeship and, importantly, required five hours of classroom instruction per week for every apprentice.  This trend continues today in states like Pennsylvania, which requires 144 classroom instruction hours, in addition to 2,000 hours on the job for registered apprentices.

On a national level, government officials and employer, educator, and labor organizations came together to form a national uniform system of apprenticeship and, in 1934, the Federal Committee on Apprenticeship (FCA) was appointed by the Secretary of Labor to recommend policy on apprenticeship in America.  It was also to make sure that apprentices were trained in current industrial codes.  This reform went a step further in 1937, when the Fitzgerald Act (aka the National Apprenticeship Law) expanded the FCA to include representation of employers, labor, and education.  This new body was called the Apprentice-Training Service and is presently the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training.  It is within the Department of Labor and currently brings employers, labor, vocational schools, state apprenticeship agencies, and other apprenticeship groups together to register and promote apprenticeship in America.  It does not, however, train apprentices.

Apprenticeships Today

Registered apprenticeships must meet minimum requirements.  Apprentices should have an equal opportunity to apply and should not be discriminated against.  They cannot start younger than 16.  They must have supervised, on the job training and a minimum of 144 of organized instruction (mostly in a classroom).  Wages must be periodically increased according to a schedule.  Employers and employees need to work cooperatively and the apprentice should be recognized when he/she has successfully completed the training.

Shorter, though unregistered, apprenticeships are available.  Notably, in 2017, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which administers Landis Valley, sponsored their 12th annual Summer Apprenticeship program in which partner companies paid students and recent graduates anywhere from $10 to $16 an hour to work at historic sites under master craftspeople and receive free training on historic construction repair skills such as brickwork and pointing, log construction, and carpentry.  It’s a great supplement to further education and looks great on a resume.

It is no secret that the United States is experiencing a skilled labor shortage.  Jobs in many sectors, such as agriculture, require a knowledge of intricate, expensive machinery and computers that is beyond what people can learn from on-the-job training and trial and error.  Apprenticeships are an investment in people and employers are increasingly turning to them to train a skilled workforce tailored to meet their needs.  Hopefully, the “arts and mysteries” taught to apprentices in this new Department of Agriculture program will inspire a new generation of agricultural innovators.

References & more information:

http://www.lancasterfarming.com/news/launch-nears-for-equipment-apprenticeship/article_7086ae5a-9b29-5a92-aebd-a0d8820769df.html

http://www.phmc.pa.gov/About/Join/Pages/Apprenticeships.aspx

https://www.doleta.gov/OA/preapprentice.cfm

https://www.doleta.gov/OA/apprenticeship.cfm

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/desperately-seeking-workers-the-looming-job-crunch/

https://www.agexplorer.com/

http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume4/november05/apprenticeship.cfm

Here's a great article where I got most of my historical information: http://www.lni.wa.gov/TradesLicensing/Apprenticeship/About/History/

Natural Dyes

by Rebecca Gray-O'Dell

Red.  Yellow.  Blue.

            From childhood, we learn these three colors as primary colors, colors that are used to create other colors.  The principal also applies today in printer inks and toner just as much as it does with crayons or paint.

            But blue, yellow and red are also primary colors in a very different sense.  Historically, they are the first colors used by humans to replicate items seen in their lives.  Red and yellow ochers appear in our earliest art.

            Eventually, these colors find their way into textiles; however, what works for cave paintings doesn’t necessarily work well in clothing.  Pigments derived from minerals and earth don’t always adhere well to the fibers used in clothing production and those that do stick around generally don’t survive repeated exposure to the sun, perspiration and the (very) occasional washing.  So, other means of coloring textiles must be found.

            These desired pigments are found in a variety of plants.  Through human ingenuity and determination, a lot of experimentation and possibly a few accidents along the way, the art of dyeing with plants is discovered. 

Quite a few plants that yield pigments make acceptable colors on cloth.  Some of these plants you can grow in your own garden today.  A word of caution, however, as most of these dye plants tend to act more like a weed than other cultivated plants.  It makes them very easy to grow, even for those not gifted with a green thumb, but require careful attention so as not to overrun the rest of your garden or back yard.

For the most part, it is easy to create your own natural dyes.  You will need to collect enough dyestuff (where the pigment comes from), water and a pot or kettle you don’t plan on using for food.  The use of a mordant, from a metal such as aluminum, iron or copper, is needed to help ‘fix' or set the color, though only in small amounts.  More explicit directions, dye recipes, are available from books on natural or plant-based dyes. 

Golden Marguerite

The color yellow is perhaps the most common color, besides sage and olive greens, produced by plants.  An easy way to experiment with making and using natural dyes is harvesting marigolds, golden marguerites or calendula flowers.  They can be used fresh or dried.  What material you want to dye will depend on how many flowers you need.  A skein of wool yarn will require more dyestuff to produce a good color than a small piece of silk or cotton fabric.  The skin of onions also yields a good yellow on fabric as long as the material being dyed doesn't stay in the dye-bath too long, otherwise, it turns a golden toned brown. 

Picking calendula flowers

For the more adventuresome, growing lady’s bedstraw and cutting the top part of the plant off while it is in bloom can make a nice yellow dye.  The best yellows are achieved on plant-based fibers, cotton or linen.  Shades of drab green appear when wool is used.  The roots of this plant may also be used to create a red dye.

Weld is perhaps the best plant that produces a long-lasting and vibrant yellow.  It has a very long history of use, dating back to the middle of the Iron Age, about 1 BCE.  A common plant throughout Europe and parts of Asia and Africa, it eventually is introduced to North America, where it is considered to be a weed.  The top part of the plant, the stalk, flowers, and leaves, are used fresh or dried for dyes.  At Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum, we have our own bed of weld just started this year, waiting to give us shades of sunshine.

Blue is a mysterious color.  In fact, there are only several types of plants around the world that produce a true-blue dye.  These plants are mostly from the genus Indigofera, which thrives in tropical areas from present day India and other parts of southern Asia, parts of West Africa, and parts of Central and South America.  Two other plants are also common sources of indigo: dyer’s knotweed, used in East Asia, and woad, used primarily in northern Europe.  The oldest use of indigo as a textile dye actually belongs to the coast of modern day Peru, where remains of cloth bearing indigo dates to about 6,000 years ago, a remarkably long time ago for a color that requires multiple processes to extract the color.

Young Japanese indigo plants in the Log Farm garden

Indigo is a difficult color to achieve as far as natural dyes go.  The plants give hardly a hint of the blue pigment they contain, except for a slight bluish tint to the overall green of the plant. Through a multiple step process, the pigment is extracted and then reduced to produce a useable dye.  Each culture has their own procedure for this process, often including fermentation and the use of stale urine to create the chemicals needed to precipitate and create an indigo dye.   Because of this, blue dyers, as well as other dyers, were kept to the fringes of settlements and cities.

It’s hard and often times smelly work, but it’s worth the trouble.  Indigo is a strong and lasting dye.  It will dye any material well, especially cotton, even modern synthetic fabrics.  Unlike other dyes, which require soaking and simmering the material to be colored, indigo needs oxidization, air, to produce blue.  The dye-bath itself is often a yellowish green, with blue appearing on the surface.  After allowing the material to absorb the dye, the material is removed and as the air strikes it, the blue appears.  It takes repeated dips in the indigo bath to produce the darkest shades of blue.

At the museum, there are plantings of both woad and dyer’s knotweed since they are best suited to our local climate.  If you wish to try to make your own indigo magic in your garden, try growing dyer’s knotweed.  There’s nothing wrong with woad, but you will need to grow lots of plants (acres worth) to get a substantial amount of indigo.

Red is another slightly elusive color.  For millennia, only one plant produces a color closest to true red: madder.  Nothing on the top part of the plant confirms what color lies beneath the soil where the vibrant roots reside.  The madder plant is a climbing shrub which can be trained to a trellis to prevent it from overtaking everything else.  The green parts of the plant are somewhat prickly and stick like Velcro.

Roots are harvested when the plant is generally 3-5 years old when the roots are more substantial in size.  They can be used fresh or dried.  Soak the dried or fresh roots to extract the pigment.  Unlocking the red pigment can take some practice as shades of orange are often yielded if the temperature of the dyebath is too hot, the pH is incorrect or the hardness of the water used to make the dyebath is off. 

Practice makes perfect, though, as is the case for what is known as Turkey red.  This particular color is famed for coloring cotton fabrics popular in the 18^th and 19^th century.  It yields a red more vibrant than the brick red of traditional madder dyes, even though to get that shade required a very lengthy and expensive process. 

You'll find a stand of madder plants growing in our gardens here at the museum.  Rumor has it that some of the madder plants are soon ready to harvest.

From these three colors, you can get nearly every shade of the rainbow.  In fact, yellow and blue are very important in making green since a true green is another hard to achieve color in the natural dye world.  

The world would be quite dull without yellow, red and blue.

Herb Faire: New Heirloom Offerings

by Joanne Ranck-Dirks

Some of the tomato crop from 2016

Every year, we conduct a few tomato trials of heirloom varieties that are new to us.  Our volunteers evaluate the tomatoes and if the tomato doesn't get a strong "yes" vote, we don't grow it again.  The winner from last year's trials is the Black Cherry tomato.  It is a plump and juicy heirloom cherry tomato with a dark purple color.  As a snacking tomato it is a nice mouthful; it looks great in salads and it is also a prolific producer.  Look for it this year in the Heirloom Seed Project's tent at the faire.

The Heirloom Seed Project Tent at the 2016 Herb & Garden Faire

Usually when we think of heirloom vegetables we think of tomatoes, but we also have other interesting and delicious heirloom vegetables.  The HSP will sell individual pots of Lemon and White cucumbers as ell as Patty Pan squash.  These have been known and grown in this area for more than 100 years.  Seeds for these will also be available in the Museum Store during the Herb & Garden Faire.  Because bean planting season comes just after the Herb & Garden Faire, folks may want to purchase beans seeds to plant.  Ornamental beans, such as Scarlet Runner beans and Hyacinth beans, can be purchased in the Landis Valley Museum Store.  Two new varieties of pole beans to try this year are Cardinal pole beans and Green Star pole beans.

Tomatoes are very popular but, because every garden is unique, we encourage you to try new plants in your own space this year.  Your perfect tomato may turn out to be a bean or a cucumber.  Both are great in salads, too.

The Case for Remaining Unattainable: The Blue Rose

by Shayla Carey

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentines Day yesterday—full of requited love and romantic times.  Today, though, I’d like to focus on love unattainable, as symbolized by the blue rose.  Like the black rose, this color is not produced in its purest form by nature in roses.  Florists have their methods of turning white petals to bright or deep blue (example, at left), but gardeners and poets must still pine for happy blooms the color of the sky they smile under.  Rudyard Kipling evoked the blue rose when he wrote a short piece that serves as a warning to suitors with high maintenance sweethearts:

Blue Roses by Rudyard Kipling

Roses red and roses white

Plucked I for my love’s delight.

She would none of all my posies

Bade me gather her blue roses.

Half the world I wandered through

Seeking where such flowers grew.

Half the world unto my quest

Answered me with laugh and jest.

Home I came at wintertide

But my silly love had died.

Seeking with her latest breath

Roses from the arms of Death.

It may be beyond the grave

She shall find what she would have.

Mine was but an idle quest—

Roses white and red are best!

According to Landis Valley’s resident garden historian, Dr. Irwin Richman, for centuries, gardeners used hybridization to tease hints of blue out of red petals.  It didn’t matter if the parents were white, red, or in between, but, because of the more complex chemistry in red petals, they were used more often.  Having said all of that, though, their results were mixed.  “Their results were incredibly subjective,” he says.  “A violet to one skeptical gardener is the elusive prized blue to another.”  He points to a listing in the Heller Rose Company of Indiana catalog from 1916:  “The Wonderful Blue Rose – Violet Blue.”  The description is not a flattering one—especially for a cultivar that the growers are trying to sell—but their honesty proves valuable to posterity.  It is a follows:

“This is the famous ‘Blue Rose’ which is a remarkable variety and endorsed by every leading Rose authority here and in Europe, but in our estimation it has not come up to the recommendation of its introducers.  We have seen it bearing flowers that were very blue and very beautiful, and we have seen it again in other soil bearing flowers which were more of a lavender than a blue, so we think it is largely a question of the soil it is grown in as to whether it develops the color claimed for it by its introducers—cornflower blue.  It is of the Rambler type, a beautiful grower, and even if it never bore a flower it is worth a place in the garden because of its rampant growth and beautiful foliage.  The flowers are produced in great clusters, are semi-double, of medium size, and as a rule are a delicate beautiful blue, but we do not guarantee the color.  It is hardy everywhere; a grand grower; a marvelous bloomer and is one of the most popular Roses in our entire collection.”

image of "Vielchenblau" rose from the Composer in the Garden blog

This variety is still around today and is known as “Veilchenblau,” which is German for violet blue.  According to the Missouri Botanical Garden’s website, this nearly-thornless hybrid multiflora rose was bred by J. C. Schmidt in 1909 from ‘Crimson Pirate’ and ‘Souvenir de Brod.’  It does best in full sun, but will tolerate partial shade, and can ramble to 10’-15’.  It is hardy to zone 4 and likes a slightly acid, well-drained, loam soil.  It will bloom in late spring, but won’t re-bloom, and the flowers start off as deep magenta, then can fade to a gray-lilac color.

It is interesting that the description above mentions soil.  Some flowers, such as hydrangeas, will turn blue in acid soil.  According to the article, “The Color Conundrum,” by Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott, in the Spring, 2009 issue of Master Gardener magazine, the red and blue hydrangeas have pigments called anthocyanins in the vacuoles of their petals.  Vacuoles are balloon-like cells filled with organic acids and dissolved salts, minerals, and other chemicals.  Sometimes, these pigments can be manipulated by adjusting the soil acidity, which effects the availability of aluminum to the plant (if there is aluminum in the soil—many soil-less mixes have none).  There are many other factors involved, but many blue flowers produce the anthocyanin delphinidin, and the blue hydrangea—for example—requires this pigment, plus a co-pigment, and aluminum to turn a beautiful shade of blue.  Without all three of these, it will revert to pink.  It’s very complex.

Image of "Applause" courtesy of Wired magazine

Roses, however, do not produce delphinidin naturally, which means that the best that breeders can do is get the faded blue-ish violet colors of cultivars such as “Veilchenblau.”  Scientists at a Japanese company called Suntory have recently genetically engineered a blue rose called “Applause.”  It is touted as the first true blue rose and, thanks to a delphinidin-producing gene inserted from a pansy into “Applause’s” parent, “Cardinal de Richelieu,” it does, indeed produce the blue pigment, though not to the same extent as that of other coveted blue flowers, such as the blue poppy (Mecanopsis grandis, see image below).  "If your soul truly aches for the ultimate blue flower, find the rare and elusive Tibetan blue poppy, Mecanopsis.  Just don't expect to find it at a florist near you," Richman says.

Comparing the two flowers, it is obvious that nature figured out long ago how much delphinidin to pack into vacuoles to produce blue and “Applause” falls a bit short.  The company does cite shortcomings with “Applause” and continues its quest for a more pure blue rose, honing nutrient and aluminum absorption, as well as zeroing in on flavones (a yellow-producing co-pigment) found in other pure blue flowers such as Mecanopsis.  Richman also points out that the real money for Suntory is not in the roses, but in the genes and processes used to engineer the blue rose, as they have patented these from the start to limit competition.

Mecanopsis - the Himalayan Blue Poppy
image by Dr. Irwin Richman

Is this really the blue rose that Kipling sought or is this cheating?  Would his sweetheart have been satisfied with a rose that, according to Wired magazine (“World’s First Blue Rose Soon Available in US," by Danielle Venton, 09/14/11), sold for 10 times as much as other roses when it was introduced or was she just after the unattainable?  Shooting for the moon and landing among the stars is more than just a saying by Norman Vincent Peale; it accurately describes the challenge of trying to obtain the unattainable blue rose and creating something almost as great—the “Vielchenblau” rose, for example.  Suntory used sheer will and billions of yen to engineer a blue rose but, in the process, it may have ruined the romanticism behind the quest for the unattainable by taking away one of its most prominent symbols.  Maybe it’s good that the company holds patents on its rose.  It makes it unattainable to most of us and, in the meantime, gives us back the challenge of accepting, and loving, the roses of red and white we already have.

The blue rose, and its equally elusive black counterpart, will be featured in Richman's book on roses and ray flowers, co-authored with Michael Emery, due out in 2018.

Luck to You in the New Year (with Pork & Sauerkraut)

Blog Post by Shayla Carey

Luck, be it good or bad, is a useful psychological impetus in our daily lives.  Never mind that walking under a ladder is unsafe:  it’s unlucky and so we go around it.  For that reason, we probably save ourselves a lot of hurt from falling objects and/or people.  Traditions abound surrounding luck symbols and, without them, I would have had no reason to try pork and sauerkraut—a savory and salty meal best enjoyed mixed with mashed potatoes (in my humble opinion) and accompanied by cold mulled cider.

A fresh ham on display at the
2016 Harvest Days

Because my Southern Pennsylvania-bred husband wants to ensure our family’s good fortune every year, we feast upon pork and sauerkraut every New Year’s Day.  It’s a Pennsylvania German tradition that dates back centuries¹ and, if my husband has anything to do with it, will last for many more years.  The pig as an ancient symbol of luck and was a farm animal in Europe for thousands of years².  It roots forward, grows fast, and to possess many meant the farmer was prosperous and would eat for a long time to come^{3 4}.  It was also a symbol of fertility and was associated with the Welsh goddess Ceridwen⁵ and the Gaulish god Moccus (“pig” is “muc” in Irish, “mochyn” in Welsh, and “moch” in modern Gaulish).  To eat it was to subscribe to the folk notion of “like produces like”¹ and other cultures eat it on New Years’ Day too.  The South eats ham, fatback, and hog’s jowl; Italy makes their pork into sausage, and people in the Philippines, Cuba, Spain, Portuga, Hungary, and Austria eat a suckling pig roasted whole.^{6 7}

Fresh cabbage enjoying a salt bath as it becomes sauerkraut

I, for one, am more of a fan of the luck applied to cabbage, as I could use a little more green in my pocket.  Who doesn’t?  According to German, Irish, and Pennsylvania German lore, cabbage is a symbol of money and consuming it will help you increase your fortune.  This is mainly because of its green color and tendency to resemble folded money when cooked.  For this reason, it shares its lucky distinction with collard greens, kale and chard in the South, and kale in Denmark.  The Croats and Slovaks enjoy their cabbage surrounding meat.⁸  The Pennsylvania Germans ferment it for weeks in a salt brine before eating it, keeping the nutrition in and imparting it with its distinctive salty tang.  Irish Americans enjoy cabbage at other times of the year, too, and, coupled with corned beef, makes for a simple, nutritious, and satisfying meal. ⁹ My family also likes to cook cut up cabbage leaves in the same pot as egg noodles.  They are a great vehicle for butter and parmesan cheese and the dish is a really easy side dish for the winter months, as both noodles and cabbage take the same amount of time to cook.

With pork and cabbage meaning so much to so many cultures, I have to admit that my husband’s family may be on to something.  I certainly do feel lucky to be alive, whole, comfortable, and surrounded by family for the coming year.  In the spirit of wishing you luck in the new year, I leave you with a recipe gleaned from the Landis Valley Cookbook, available at the Landis Valley Museum Store.

Pork and Sauerkraut

3- or 4-pound pork roast

2 baking apples

2 quarts sauerkraut

¼ cup brown sugar (more or less, depending on the tarness of the sauerkraut)

Salt and pepper

Put pork into a large roasting pan, fat side up.  Sear all sides of the meat on top of the stove.  Arrange the sauerkraut on top and around the pork.  Thinly slice the apples and mix with the sauerkraut.  Add brown sugar and stir it well into the sauerkraut.  Add enough water to nearly cover the sauerkraut.  Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes.  Reduce the heat to 375 degrees and bake until the meat comes off the bones when stuck with a fork.  Serve with mashed potates.  Julia Lewis, c. 1930

Sources:

¹South Central Pennsylvania Legends & Lore, by David Puglia, page 26.

²For a really interesting article about the history of pig farming in Europe, click on the BBC article, “Pig DNA reveals farming history.”

³Landis Valley Cookbook, Landis Valley Associates, page 131.

⁴”Dead Lucky! What Germans Consider Lucky Charms” by Tatjana Kerschbaumer, Goethe Intitut.

^{5The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain}, by Lewis Spence, page 160.

⁶“New Year’s traditions around the world,” by Nancy Clanton; Atlanta Journal Contitution.

⁷”Lucky Foods for the New Year,” by Lauren Salkeld, Epicurious.

⁸“Lucky Foods for the New Year,” by Annette Foglino, Smithsonian.com.

⁹“Corned Beef and Cabbage:  As Irish as Spaghetti and Meatballs,” by Stephanie Butler, History.com.

Calm Down this Holiday Season with Chamomile

Guest blog entry by Dr. Irwin Richman

What can be more calming than a nice cup of chamomile tea?  The apple-scented tea is made from two different chamomiles:  either German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla), or Roman or garden chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile).

Chamomile is easy to grow from seed and it reseeds itself.  Roman, or garden, chamomile often naturalizes in lawns, especially in England as, along with English daisies (Bellis), it can survive close trimming.

They have attractive daisy flowers, hence their membership in the Asteraceae family of ray flowers, along with sunflowers and Black-eyed Susans.  Both of these tea making plants are close relatives of the unlovely plant with a beautiful family name, "Ambrosia." Ambrosia psilostachya is a rag weed scourge of hay fever sufferers.  If you have hay fever, chamomile tea might give you a kick you're not seeking.

In the middle ages, a popular garden feature was a turf seat, and earthen sculpture covered in grass which was close cropped.  As a variant, these turf seats could be covered in herbs which could be closely cropped and chamomile was favored because it emits a nice aroma when sat upon.  Another favored herb for this purpose was creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum).  While few, if any turf seats were built in America, more are known to have survived, but creeping thyme is still used in old PA German cemeteries where it is planted atop graves so that visitors will have fragrant visits.

Another chamomile is dyer's chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria), a widely naturalized perennial herb with hairy, divided leaves and yellow flowers that is Eurasian in origin.  Not medicinal, like German & Roman chamomile, it was used, as the name suggests, as a yellow to orange dyestuff.  Some folks grow it in their gardens for its blossom.  I remember it as a boy growing in the cow pastures during my Catskill Mountain childhood.

All of this & more are in the new book currently being written by Irwin Richman & Michael Emery, Of Ray Flowers & Roses, due in 2019. You can also read about chamomile and other heirlooms in the book, Heritage Gardens, Heirloom Seeds, also written by Richman & Emery.

Landis Valley’s Gentle Giants

Guest blog entry by Joanne Ranck Dirks

Here at Landis Valley it’s easy to imagine living in the past when riding on a wagon pulled by two slow-stepping draft horses.  The farm on the museum grounds is home to eight of these gentle giants who ferry visitors of all ages around the site.  It’s wonderful to hear delighted school children shout, “Horses!  Horses!” and see seniors smile and exclaim, “I haven’t had a wagon ride since I was a child!”

The horses have names as unique as they are.  There’s Duke, Maude, Ben, Hank, and Hunter, and then there’s Bonnie and her daughters, Lizzie and Nettie May.  Both of Bonnie’s girls were born here and Nettie May is named after Nettie May Landis, sister of our museum’s founders.  Four are Percherons, two are Belgians and two are Clydesdales.

These draft horses do most of their work when temperatures are warm, from April to November, but that is mostly to please the folks who ride on the wagons.  The horses themselves prefer to be outside in temperatures that range from 40 to 80 degrees.  Winter wagon rides are a treat during the Country Christmas Village (December 3 and 4).  At the annual Holiday Bonfire (December 16), wagon rides happen in the dark with bells jingling!  And on the occasion of a deep snowfall, it doesn’t take long to hitch up the horses to the bobsled.

 There’s also work to be done each year in June during the annual Summer Institute classes here at Landis Valley.  The class “Using Horses as Draft Animals” gives participants an opportunity to learn to drive horses and also watch demonstrations of horses cultivating rows in the field.

Four of the horses are owned by volunteers and four are owned by the museum. They are some of our best museum ambassadors, as they occasionally travel to other historic sites to give wagon rides, join parades and compete at the Pennsylvania State Farm Show held in January each year pulling carts and wagons.

In past centuries, teams of draft horses pulled Conestoga freight wagons filled with the bounty of Lancaster County farms to Philadelphia and returned with manufactured goods.  The horses at Landis Valley today don't work that hard yet they help us glimpse into the past and do it handsomely.​