By David Lazenby

davidl@cullmantimes.com

A barnyard, cotton field and antiquated kitchen substituted for classrooms Wednesday as East Elementary School second graders got a hands-on history lesson.

“We got to see how life was long ago and how easy they (students) have it,” teacher Susan Nesmith said about a field trip to Peinhardt Living History Farm where the visitors learned about life from an increasingly forgotten time.

This month, the non-profit farm is offering the same educational experience to other area students whose experience will include getting their hands on milking cows and other farm animals.

“It was kind of gross,” said Anna Grace Franklin about the experience of milking a cow, one of several activities new to the elementary students.

Pupils also got to pet piglets and other farm animals, pick cotton, churn milk for butter and watch volunteers demonstrate how things were done during a long-gone era.

Will Kress, 8, said he enjoyed trying his hand at chopping wood and seeing how “people in the old days lived.”

“They had some really tough, difficult times,” Will said.

Bailee Ponder, 7, noticed some machines were unlike the modern-day versions to which she is accustomed.

“They didn’t have regular types of stoves like we do,” said Bailee, who admits she would miss “the good foods” and other contemporary conveniences if she were permanantly transported to the past.

“You would get really hot because you wouldn’t have a lot of electricity,” Bailee said.

Nesmith said the lessons learned on the farm will be revisited in the classroom when her students compare modern life with the lifestyle her students got a taste of Wednesday.

Five stations are set up at the farm for its visitors. The house and garden station teaches students about the daily house and garden routines of a 30s farm family. The woods station demonstrates importance of trees to early north Alabama farmers. The work animals station familiarizes students with animals used for transportation and work prior to tractors and automobiles. The field station’s goal is to help students learn the importance of field crops in sustaining the farm family. The barnyard station educates students on the animals common to the barnyard.

After seeing a poster showing the stages of a chicken before it hatches, Julian Wolf observed one of the early versions “looks like an alien.”

An incubator full of fluffy chicks were less intimidating for students who each got an opportunity to hold the newborns.

Bill Peinhardt said his family decided to convert its family farm to a facility for cultivating the area’s agricultural heritage in 1992 after his parents passed away.

According to the farm’s Web site, the seeds of the farm were planted after the Peinhardt family immigrated from Germany to Cullman in the late 1870s.

Margie Dial, one of about several farm volunteers, said this is an important mission as the age of agriculture is being forgotten.

“They really know very little about the good ‘ole days,” she said about the students who got to see how many of their great-grandparents lived.

Another program volunteer, Brenda Quattlebaum, said the farm teaches students about what they eat.

“A lot of them don’t know where their food comes from,” she said. “I think it’s important that they learn that.”

On Saturday, others will be allowed to step back in time when the educational farm opens its gates to the public for Peinhardt Farm Day, which will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the homestead located on Hwy. 278 across from Smith’s Farm Country Meat. Parking for the event is near the Cullman Bowling Center, located at 1710 Tally Ho St. NW.

Displays will include demonstrations of woodworking tools, quilting and needlework, blacksmithing, sorghum syrup production, grist mill, beekeeping. Other features of the farm include tours of restored log buildings and the agricultural museum, buggy and hay wagon rides.

WHAT: Peinhardt Farm Day

WHERE: The Peinhardt Living History Farm, Hwy. 278

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday

COST: $5 admission for those 17 and older; $3 for those 3 to 16 years old