Embracing the Harvest Spirit

For millennia, people have celebrated the earth’s bounty in fall, preparing for the cold, dark winter ahead. Today we have brightly lit supermarkets stocked all year long, but that ancient urge to celebrate the autumn harvest endures.

Every weekend at the Museum’s 1904 ranch cabin, we see all ages indulging that spirit. Kids love getting their hands dirty, digging potatoes in our ranch garden, crosscut sawing, and helping at our 100-year-old sawmill. They do it all without much prompting from the homesteaders portrayed live there.

Parents are always telling us they are delighted to see their kids away from video games, and actually having fun doing chores, helping the homesteaders sweep the porch and tend to the chickens.

On weekends throughout the fall, the settlers will be cooking over their wood stove, chatting about the new technology in town (the telephone, automobile, electricity), the suffragette movement and speculating on what winter will bring. See you there!

Characters are at the ranch weekends, 11am – 3 pm, weather permitting, and on weekdays in the Hall of Exploration and Settlement.)
Photo by Lee Schaefer, High Desert Museum volunteer