A simpler time
Butter, yarn made the old-fashioned way at Wiegert Prairie Fall Fest
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PALMER -- Deb Erickson, of Pomeroy, does at home what she was demonstrating Sunday at the 42nd Annual Wiegert Prairie Fall Fest at the Wiegert Prairie Farmstead.
So that hand cranked butter churn she was using?
It's not for show.
"I do this at home, usually about every six months," Erickson said. "Then we freeze it. I use the churn just because it's more authentic."
She also cans, bakes the family bread from scratch, raises their meat and gardens.
"I love it," she said. "It's not so stressful."
So how do people react to seeing the process that results in butter.
"Some of them ask, 'What is that?'" she said. "They don't see butter in this form."
The part of the cream that doesn't become butter is buttermilk. Erickson freezes the buttermilk and later uses it for baking.
"Nothing goes to waste," she said. "If it does, I have a slop bucket that goes to my chickens."
She wasn't the only one with something vintage to work on.
Nancy Feddersen, of Storm Lake, brought her spinning wheel to demonstrate the craft of turning wool into yarn.
"It's probably 50 years old," Feddersen said of her wheel. "This is my first wheel."
She used to raise sheep for wool, but now sources it from friends, fellow spinners and the internet. She said almost any fiber can be spun into yarn.
Yes, that includes dog hair.
"You want to mix that with another fiber," she said, "otherwise it gets too hot."
Feddersen said observers' reactions to her work vary a bit.
"Some are just fascinated by the whole process," she said. "The men are fascinated by the wheel and the kids just want to make it spin."
Once she's produced a skein of yarn, she knits with it.
"I don't sell it," she said.
The last occupant of the farm was Harry Wiegert, who died in 1980.
Today it's a living history museum and, to this day, the house hasn't been wired for electricity and there's no central heating -- just a big stove in the parlor.
Connie Dallenbach, of Laurens, spent Sunday in period clothing in that parlor talking to visitors about the farm and Harry Wiegert.
Wiegert was a lifelong bachelor that kept a few odd things.
"For some reason he saved his mother's wedding dress," Dallenbach said. "Why this old bachelor saved his mother's wedding dress is anybody's guess. It's beautiful."
He also had the curly hair from his first haircut in a box. Saving that is a tradition that's fallen by the wayside.
"When kids see that they think it's the creepiest thing they've ever seen," she said.
Dallenbach was the accompanist for the morning church service at the site.
The piano tuner had removed a mouse nest, she said, thus there was no "incident."
"I told them if there's a little squeak, it’s a mouse in the piano. If it's loud, it's me streaking out," she said.
Patrick Frank, of Havelock, had attended the morning church service.
"We sang lots of hymns of praise," Frank said. "It was neat to do that in an old church, just a piano and a bunch of people singing. It was a moving spiritual experience."