Harvest Moon Festival in Farmington is window into past

It's easy for Don Holz to get kids to do chores. At least, chores circa 1900.

Kids crowd around the Dakota City Heritage Village volunteer during their Harvest Moon Festival, helping him to feed ears of dry field corn into a sheller and turning the crank to make chicken feed.

"It's always fun to work with the kids and see their expressions," he said. "Most kids love to do that sort of thing. We talk about how this is what they would be doing after school. They wouldn't be going to watch television. Even the little children had to do small jobs growing up on the farm in those early days."

During the event, kids pick corn by hand in the fields, and Holz discusses the entire process, from drying out the corn in the granary, where the wind blows through the slatted walls, to disposing of the cobs. "The corncobs could be used for a quick hot fire to make lunch," he said. "They were always used somewhere. If they weren't used in the stove, they would be used out in the fields."

The second Harvest Moon Festival at the 1900-era Dakota City Heritage Village in Farmington is scheduled for Friday and Saturday. The event, formerly known as Grand History Day and targeted to grandparents and their grandkids, last year became a Halloween event, with pumpkin-painting and haunted hayrides open to everyone.

Big celebrations this time of year were common in the past, said volunteer Roberta Schafer. "People would get together after a harvest," she said. "You never know with the Minnesota winter. You probably wouldn't see each other until spring."

Schafer works in the ladies' dress shop with the old treadle sewing machines, run by foot power, making her own clothes with all the requisite layers -- bloomers, chemise, petticoat, underskirt, overskirt and so on. She also cooks over the wood-burning stove in the Harris House, making breakfasts of fried potatoes and onions cooked in lard, along with pancakes and egg coffee. She bakes gingerbread or pies in the afternoons and cooks dinners of pork chops and sauerkraut or fried chicken.

At the festival, kids do period crafts, making ropes, pinwheels and cornhusk-and-rag dolls. Volunteer Lea Guenther helps kids do potato prints and dip their own candles. Her granddaughter shows kids how to peel apples for pies and applesauce on the porch of the Harris House.

"So many of the kids really are interested because it's so foreign to what they are used to," Guenther said.

As kids work their way around the grounds -- shelling corn, washing clothes and making crafts -- they stamp a card at each station. A full card earns a coupon for December's Christmas in the Village celebration.

After all that hard work, they enjoy sandwiches and hot apple cider at the drug store, or rock candy, candy sticks and taffy at the confectionery. They also can take trolley and tractor rides, and a "not-too-spooky" haunted hayride.

"People come out and just enjoy the weather out here," said Mary Hendricks, Dakota City board member and vice president. "We don't rake, so you've got the leaves to walk through. It's just a nice, cozy feeling. We have candles in the windows, and you step back into a different time."