The first images in the slideshow below are the most recent. The students and teachers of the BLAST program, a summer learning “camp” centered at Bridgeton’s West Avenue School, decided to drop around to the Farmstead on July 16 and check out the scene. The weather had about discouraged anyone setting foot outside the school door after 9 AM, so they started early, before it got unbearably hot.
What a great bunch of kids, and a superb teacher with them, Reid Westergaard, an artist of musical theater, Danish by heritage and pretty simpatico about the whole Swedish thing. Reid was fixed on the idea of creating a musical: “The Founding of New Sweden.” So for the kids a visit to the Farmstead was sort of going “on location.”
We’d already mapped the layout. The kids had some idea what each of the buildings was for. This was a chance to get up close and see the workmanship behind construction, to break down specific uses.... They were baffled by the herb garden, most of them, until we talked through some of the uses of herbs in old times. They were fascinated by the smithy with its sod roof. We had some fun later talking about the working of iron--unknown in this part of the New World before the arrival of Europeans. They realized that metalworking is where the surname “Smith” came from. They talked about the transformation of metal through heat into implements for farming and other common settler activities.
Backing up: On June 7, 2012, two Swedish Vasa members visited: Maureen and Göte Bengtsson of Jönköping, Sweden, enthusiastic supporters of our progress in restoring the Farmstead. Their visit only highlighted the value of this site as a potential tourist destination and teaching venue, and the critical importance of immediate intervention in the repair of the cabins.
We hope you’ll agree, and, like Maureen and Göte, spread the word about the urgency to contribute to this project in order to save the Farmstead for another generation.
The rest of the photo record here goes backward to 2009, when the project was effectively reorganized, and work begun under new leadership.
It includes two programs involving visiting students from Eskilstuna in 2011 and 2012 via an annual exchange program with Bridgeton High School, begun in the 1980s and still ongoing. The most recent visit appears to have reopened the productive relationship with our sister-city and provided the first effective restoration initiative for the cabins. More on this to come!
Thanks to our very generous donors and the City of Bridgeton’s loan of City Hall storage space over the past three years, the interpretive artifacts have now been inventoried and will soon be moved to another location for safe storage.
We want now to focus on the restoration of the cabins, which somehow still send out the vibrations of another historical time.
If you find yourself inspired by the sight of so much unrealized potential for living history (and the thought of being able to celebrate reopening here on the 375th anniversary in 2013), please go to the “Donate” page and give this work your blessing. No amount is too small--or for that matter, too large!!
And come back again. We are moving forward, now planning a major celebration and fundraising event to take place at the Farmstead this time. We are actively renewing signs of the kind of human activity that makes “living history” live!
Please join us!
