A Few More Pictures from Upper Canada Village

 Here are a few more views of our visit to Upper Canada Village.  In this back shed, an attractive small wagon was parked and, in the background, is a substantial amount of firewood that would be used to heat and cook with.

 A pleasant vignette shows a couple of farm workers piling loose hay into a wagon. The St.Lawrence river can be seen behind the field. The "villagers" do real farm work with the horses and oxen.

 This is an unusual house.  To me it looks like it should be in the South-west US. The fences around the houses and gardens provided protection from the farm animals who were often left to wander loose to eat grass where they could find it.

The tinsmith was busy at work producing household items.  Tourists can purchase his wares at the gift shop.

I liked this picture that was being made out of dried flowers.  The words at the bottom say, "Long Live the Queen."

 The brooms are made from broom plants that are grown at the village. 

 The sawmill is a great place to see.  I wish I had better pictures of it and that you could smell the delicious pine scent that permeates the building.  The mill is powered by a water-mill placed in the small stream that runs through the village. Just to the left of the man is a large vertical saw blade.  When he has finished placing the log, the blade will be engaged and move up and down cutting the log which is slowly moved along by a frame. The mill makes quite a bit of lumber which is then used in the village for various building projects.

I really like this cabin.  It is so typical of the early settlers rough buildings. Notice the little eaves trough over the door. The cabins were small making them easier to heat in the winter.  Heat was always provided by wood, and it was a lot of hard work to cut the trees down and into short lengths and then split the wood into manageable pieces. Even today, using a chain saw, cutting enough firewood for the winter is a lot of work. 

Upper Canada Village

 Last week we visited Upper Canada Village which is suppose to show an Ontario village around 1860.  This is the hardware section of a general store.  The barrels probably had nails and spikes and other bits needed for building.

This is a view of the outside of the store.  It's quite plain as most of them would have been.

 Inside are an assortment of useful kitchen and dining items as well as a wonderful rocking horse that would be hard to resist buying. On the other side of the store, bags of flour, sugar, candy and other necessities were on display, but too many tourists were blocking the view to get a good photo.

The grocery store would often be the post office as well.

These posters are actually printed at the print shop at the village using old wooden and metal type.  The print shop also produces posters to advertise current events going on at the village.  When we stopped in, the woman printer was hard at work creating a new poster for a special fall festival.  She explained some of the challenges of picking an appropriate font as some of the fonts might not have enough of one letter to write the needed words, or some fonts just make a particular word look odd. All the tiny print on the Lion Of The North poster was set by hand at the print shop. Great looking horse!

Southern Ontario became home to many United Empire Loyalists (people loyal to the British monarch) as they fled the US around the time of the American Revolution.  This house definitely has a New England feel to it.

 The side garden had lots of zinnias which were probably popular back then.

In the backyard, we saw a couple of nice pear trees.  Some varieties of pears are hardy enough for our winters, but apples trees are by far the more popular fruit tree.

Behind the house is a large mixed vegetable and flower garden.  The flowers here would be used for bouquets or as dried flowers.
More pictures next time.  I was disappointed to realize I didn't take photos of the many "villagers" dressed in period costume. Some other time I must focus on the people.