Shaker Village

We loaded up and drove over to Lexington, Kentucky on Saturday to go to the Shaker Village at Plesent Hill. It was pretty cool, I visited the village when I was 15 on a 4-H trip. So, we headed out and drove the 3 hours.

The kids were pumped up for the chance to ride the river boat. But, too bad for us, the river was too high and the boat was not running. Isaac was certian the this place would suck cause we couldn't ride the boat. Four and a half hours latter neither one of the kids wanted to leave. Amy was exausted and need to sit down, but the kids wanted to stay.

We started out at the main gift shop where you buy the tickets. We moved out to the road the runs down the center of the buildings and into the main meeting house where we read the quick history of the Shakers so we knew the story. We then visited one of the big housing buildings, the white block building. For those of you who don't know, there are two doors to all buildings that both men and women used. The Shakers beleived in celabeicy, to the extream, different doors even different stair cases. The white building housed 80 to 100 people at a time. The kitchen in the basement was cool. All the rooms in all the buildings were lined with pegs, Shaker pegs, to hang what ever needs to be hung up. There were some neat adjustable shelves.

We cut he tour of the white building short so we could make it to the sheep shearing demonstration. There were plenty of SHEEP and even a 7 day old lamb. The old boy who was there to demonstrate the shearing of a sheep was cool. He is in his mid-seventys and has sheared all over the US. He and I talked for a bit afterwards and he told me that a few years back he spent a summer in Utah shearing. He remebmered spenging a bunch of time in Spanish Fork and driving south on I-15. I told him I was from a town where a couple of guys had 1000+ head, he was trying to think of name of guys he knew, I ask him if he knew Tim Anderson. He said he didn't know Tim but he know the name, he said the Tim has sent a lot of good hearty black face sheep out here. That was cool to hear. (If you don't know, Tim Anderson runs his operation out of Sigurd.)

After the sheep shearing we headed over to the next building. They were spinning the wool into yarn and then weaving it into blankets. The nice lady spinning the wool let the kids comb some of the wool out.

We visited the wood working buildings were they were building bowls, butter churns, and oval boxes. Isaac kept going back to the one where the guy had been shaving some cedar with a drawknife. It smelt great, but he said that he liked it because it reminded him of our garage in Washington where we had the shop set up. Amy and Lexy had a lot of fun watching the broom maker and Lexy even got a broom at the gift shop.

It was a great time. We have a ton of pictures but can only post a few. I'll have to make a video out of them.