Over the last two weeks I feel like I have been living out of my suitcase. Pretty much as soon as I got back from DC I took off for Archibald, Ohio to attend the Fall 2009 Midwest Open Air Museum conference. The attendees are made up educators, administrators and volunteers from museums in the Midwest. It is a great chance to learn about new trends and network with others in the field. Our own Jim Bloomstrand presented a session with Dr.s Deb Reid and Joe Anderson on the evolution of farming in the postwar era. Jim brought a personal perspective to the program when he shared home movies from his family farm. The movies perfectly illustrated the changes in equipment, livestock, crops and manpower that marked the middle part of the twentieth century. I'm hoping I can get Jim to give an encore presentation for a future volunteer meeting, he did a great job. I've also included a shot of my friend Terry Sargent giving a talk about interpreting period harvesting techniques.
The keynote speaker was Joe Anderson who spoke about his newest book on agriculture. Joe is a professor at Mount Royal University in Canada. I first met Joe about 15 years ago when he was working at Living History Farms in Des Moines. A couple years later he gave me my first supervisors job at the 1900 era farm at LHF.
I don't want to give the wrong impression that the conference was all stuffy academic reports and speeches. On Friday night there is a dinner and dance. Each conference picks a theme and many of the participants dress accordingly. This year's theme was "Going Green". Wagner Farm was well represented by Jim who won best use of green, and Carlin and Joyce who won best green couple! Great job guys.
