Oliver Kelley Farm

Ever since I've known Chris and have been traveling north on Highway 10 to his parents' cabin, I've driven past signs for the Oliver Kelley Farm. It seemed unbelievable that a working 1860s farmstead was hidden somewhere behind exurban sprawl and a nondescript landscape. Yet I was curious. But on these drives to the cabin, I was anxious to continue on north and with the farm located 45 minutes northwest of St. Paul, I never found the time to make a separate trip to visit.

Friends who are members of the Minnesota Historical Society, which operates the Oliver Kelley Farm, invited the kids and me to join them for an afternoon at the farm and I finally got to see this hidden gem. Other friends had raved about how they were encouraged to participate in farm life during their visit, but I assumed this was because they had visited during the off season when few others were around. I discovered that this is simply how the Oliver Kelley Farm operates. The Historical Society advertises it as a working farm, but it's truly more than that. The farm combined aspects of Philadelphia's Please Touch Museum and Colonial Williamsburg to create an open-air history classroom. Visitors young and old are encouraged by the costumed staff to participate in farm life. My children helped collect eggs from the chicken coop, peel vegetables in the kitchen, pump water from the well for the animals, feed the sheep, drive the oxen to the fields, harvest crops - and learned a bit about history in the process. I also appreciated how knowledgeable the staff was and how patient they were to my many, many questions.

Oliver loved pumping water from the well. It might have been his favorite activity. They brought the buckets over to a trough for the horses.

The oxen were brought out so we could bring a cart to the fields to harvest crops.

I thought helping to harvest crops would teach our kids about hard work, but instead, it was a parenting fail. And not because they didn't love manual labor (they really did!), but because of mosquitoes! They emerged from the fields covered in bug bites.

The side of the Oliver Kelley farmhouse

My attempt at a group shot of our kiddos