Our last event of the season was our Harvest Event on the weekend of October 8 & 9, 2022. Now that we are into the month of November we will be winterizing our horse carousel so rides will not be available until the month of May 2023 when we we-open the museum village. By the end of December our 2023 season calendar will be available on this website as well as in our in-print newsletter which you can request at: thecurranhomestead@gmail.com. We will continue to schedule workshops for adults and kids throughout late fall and the winter. There will be other ongoing activities at the museum which you can participate in. If interested, you can consult our webpages on this website or our Facebook page: “19th Century Curran Village” for the latest news about the museum. Be sure to check out our photo album and other webpages on this website, as we have been updating them to document the progress of our recent construction efforts and evolving programming offerings. Thank you for your interest!
Painting in October and November?
Our Country Store has gotten a lot of attention recently with a major scraping, caulking and new coats of blue stain.The Country Store was relocated from southern Maine in 2020 in five pieces so its taken some major work on the part of our staff to get it back together again,Our Grain & Cider Mill was the center of action during our October Harvest Event. We made 200 gallons of cider! It was recently painted for the first time having been constructed over the last two years. This Grain & Cider Mill is a completely new construction, and it will be the center of grain and apple processing as well as hoof, paw, hand and foot power with our collection of machine powering animal treadmills.Our Machine Shop has also received a coat of stain recently. We hope to get this shop set up to run our machinery in it with steam power over the coming months. This twin screw cider press did not get used this past Harvest Event due to the need to fabricate some additional parts, and we will do that for next year’s apple season. We did use the apple grinding mill that goes with it for the first time!
Join our Cider Making Co-Op. Pics from our October 8 & 9, 2022 Harvest Event
Nate Coe feeds our apple grinding mill that was set up with a flat belt and early electric motor. It chewed up apples for cider like nothing else.The fly wheel is achieving some rpms as we fed apples into the hopper of the grinder for more than a couple of days to get through more than 60 bushels of apples.at rest, after severasl days of hard going. We formed a co-op to procerss cider each apple season. To belong you contribute apples and labor to the enterprise. Your reward is a portion of the yield for your own consumption.we had our steam traction engine going during the Harvest Event; it will eventually power the Machine Shop seen behind it with the installation of a line shaft pulley system.Much of our cider making was done on these portable cider mills.This press includes twin screws that were cast in Waterville, ME in the 1870s!We started in July offering rides on the carousel.Susan Howard has been doing foot treadle sewing with us this season. Here she shows some of her handywork. A tote bag made from a feed bagA Knife Making Workshop we did with the Raymond-Casco Historical Society in August.
Summer S.T.E.A.M. History Camp, 2022
The Letterpress Office has become the center of table top workshops; we did printing, weaving, calligraphy, jewelry making and sculpture making in the shop during the summer history camp. Mark Matteau of the Dunstan Press led our letterpress printing workshop with kids 7-12 this past summer.Tetley T is always the center of attention; get a ride in her.Lap loom weaving at our summer history camp.Foot treadle sewing machine sewing.Ken Hamilton shared Algonquin peoples dance and song at our summer camp.Campers stringing wampum.Our new Whig & Courier Letterpress OfficeCampers work at constructing lap looms for weaving.
