Sunday, July 18, 2010

Smith cooper shop and farm

Joseph Smith Sr. was a master cooper, or maker of barrels. At one point the gold plates were hidden in the cooper shop.

When a huge oak tree fell down, farmers often hollowed out sections of the trunks and used them as barrels. The original oak barrel!

The light wood yoke on the wall is a human yoke, used for carring buckets of water. What a great way to keep your kids busy. If they got too roudy, you could just tell them to go get water!


This barn is larger than the one the Smiths would have had. But the cool thing about this barn is that it was from Brigham Young's farm! The whole superstructure was original. The outside wood had to be replaced when the barn was moved.


Below you can see what beehives used to look like. At the back of the picture you can see the sacred grove in the distance.







1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lucy Mack Smith reports the family harvested 1000 lbs of maple sugar each spring in Palmyra. That would have required 500 trees and hauling 60,000 lbs of sap, and five tons of firewood. Likely that the Smiths made more buckets than barrels, and used the yokes for hauling sap. One 5 gal bucket of sap weighs 40 lbs, and boils down to a half quart of syrup.