It can be easy, for me at least, to romanticize the olden days. Well, I didn’t always used to be this way, thinking about how quaint it would be to grind one’s own grain and make meals for the men folk to eat when they came in from the fields.

But as the years have passed since I was a nose ring wearing, hot pink hair sporting single gal who ate Taco Bell two times a week and microwaved the rest of her meals in plastic containers, I’ve started to fancy myself a little more, how shall I say, crunchy.

Don’t get me wrong, I want nothing to do with the plain frocks of the days of yore. I’ll boil beans and learn to darn socks and maybe even develop an interest in pickling and canning, but I still want my brightly colored clothing and central vac. I’m a bit of a bandwagon granola chick, I will agree. But still. I’m pretty earthy and I would like to move our family’s ways even more and more towards how things were in the olden days.

Or, should I say, that’s what I used to want. After the super fun outing super educational homeschool field trip I took our MSC on the other day, I’m singing a slightly different tune.

My new tune goes something like, “I romaaaanticize the olden days, but now just a liiiiiiittle. I want to be natural and make lots of my own stuuuuuuuuuuff, but now I also realize how haaaaaaaaaard that would be.” Sung to the tune of, er, I didn’t really figure that out. Sorry. I think I’ll not quit my day job.

I mean, for the love of Pete, in the olden days, farmers had to use oxen like these to plow their fields! Uffda. How do I know that? Well, our children and I learned all about what farm life was like in our state gobs of years ago when we visited a working 1850′s farm the other day.

And by working, I do mean working. Upon entering the farm, we were put to work. Well, thankfully the workers at the farm, all dressed in period clothing, recognized that me being there with five young children, one of whom wanted to nurse rather frequently, was work in and of itself. So, instead, our children worked.

Gathering eggs from the chicken coop, sorting beans for the next day’s dinner, helping with the laundry (Goodness sakes alive, never in my entire 33 years of life have I ever been so thankful for my washer and dryer!), assisting the farmhands and gathering hay were among our MSC’s conquests that day.

Thankfully, we were given frequent breaks.

When we nibbled on strawberries.

And snoozed.

And drank some lemonade and strolled down by the river while I thanked my lucky stars that I was never granted my wish to be able to live the simple life like in the olden days.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love living naturally and think we busy Americans can learn a lot from the people back in the day who lived without being connected to their iPhones, ate whole foods and knew the power of hard work.

But sweet pickles and homemade honey, I won’t ever have the same view of the folks who came before us as I did before. Man, those people must have been hard workers, I tell ya! I was so thankful to be able to take our children there (And thankful as well to be able to “count” that outing as our school lesson for the day, or maybe the week.). They had an absolute blast and really soaked in a lot of learning. And spilled a lot of beans on the kitchen floor, not naming any names (Cough, Stellan.).

While I watched our children help a farmer fix his broken (Wooden!) equipment, I was also struck by how hard these pretend old fashioned people worked. I mean, this place is open nearly all week. And they really, really do everything (That I saw, at least.) the old fashioned way. The farm is a totally working one and, although I completely understood that before taking our MSC there, seeing it in action was totally different.

The kids were in awe of the place. It was completely gorgeous there! Can you see Nuggey forging ahead, holding his “map” in this picture? They guided me all around the homestead and farm, letting me know where they wanted to work next.

Besides the new appreciation I got for the families who lived and worked like this, we also all got a really fun experience.

I’m pretty sure our kids wished that they lived there. I’ll try not to burst their bubbles just yet. I’ll let them swim around in the sea of romanticizing the olden days for a while. It really does seem like a beautiful, peaceful time. Just with, you know, lots and lots (And lots!) of hard work. Next time, I’m totally smuggling in some frozen Snickers bars to pass out on the sly to the workers. Like, totally.

In the meantime, they’ll just be nibbling on this soon to be pickled vegetable (Or was it a fruit?) that had the name “melon” in its name, but wasn’t really a melon. And I forgot the whole name. And washing it down with the homemade ketchup (In the clay jar.) that the gal in the kitchen made while we were there. Oh, and no screens equal lots of flies, in case you were wondering.

MckFlurry napped almost the entire time we were there when he was not nursing. Really, the outing with all of them wasn’t too hard at all. Children ages 5 and under are free, so that was a major score for the home team. And Flurry got to nap on the farmer’s bed in the main house. The bedroom was right off the kitchen! Crazy. Although, I lived in a rented, old house like that when I was a teacher. My bedroom was off the kitchen. It always smelled like, well, food in there. Which I didn’t care for. But it did have super tall ceilings, and thick, white crown moulding. I painted my bedroom a sunshine yellow and had a huge mosquito net from Pier I hanging above my bed. But I digress.

And once, when I was nursing in the rocking chair in the kitchen, watching a few of my children collect wood, I asked the others to see if they could search the house for the refrigerator. It bought me about eight minutes, so that was nice. And then I told them why they couldn’t find one. They were in awe. And then they wanted to explore the cellar and find the kittens again.

We went out to the barn and helped feed hay (That the big boys had helped the field workers gather into the wagon earlier.) to the animals. Our baby boy had a really rough go of it that day, as you can see.

Stellan was utterly enamored with the horses, Nuggey with the cats.

We watched men make gigantic (And I do mean gigantic!!) piles of hay, heard a farmhand ask my kids if they were farm kids (And later told me he was very impressed, for non farm kids, with their knowledge of straw and hay and various types of bales to which I responded that they didn’t get that from me!) and swept the barn. I mean, my kids swept. Not me. I just pushed the stroller, made sure no one ran into a field with animals and took pictures. But I guess you probably gathered most of that already.

Small Fry and Stellan really loved the hay loft.

And exploring the shed.

As for me, as I said, I enjoyed the new appreciation I gained for the folks whose lives I used to think were mostly lovely and simple.

I enjoyed being with my children as much as ever, the strawberries we brought, the time spent looking at the river and our strolls through the woods.

And, in case I haven’t mentioned it, MckFlurry enjoyed lots of milk and lots of sleep.

And then we said goodbye to the farm and went back to our lives full of technology and modern conveniences.

But all six of us are better for the experience. And we can’t wait to go back again!