Farm Life

The Kelley House has been restored to its 1876 appearance. Census records and other documents indicate that Oliver Kelley never actually lived in this new house. He moved to Washington, D.C., with his family in 1871, just before losing the farm on a mortgage foreclosure. After regaining ownership of the farm (1874), Kelley began building his new house here, planning to return to the farm to live. Two of his daughters, Fanny and Julia, moved back to the homeplace in 1876 and farmed here for the next 10 years.

The barn has also been restored and the outbuildings rebuilt. The New England style side-hill barn now houses horses and cattle. Oats and wheat are stored in the barn's granary and hay and straw are stacked in the bays. The pigs and sheep are housed in their own sheds, the poultry in a period chicken coop. A machine shed holds the plows and implements and corn dries in the corncrib. All of these "plan book" farm buildings are built to patterns from the 1850s with period hardware and construction techniques.

Oxen are used for a variety of tasks on the Kelley Farm. Here the Shorthorn oxen drag a harrow through the fields to prepare a plowed field for planting. This living history farm preserves the techniques and spirit of mid-19th-century farming to dramatize the change in agricultural technology that took place from 1850 to1876.

Students experience what life was like on a Minnesota farm 150 years ago. The Kelley Farm educational program allows school children to participate in farm activities and learn about history.

Although the garden was often part of the farm wife's work, children were expected to help. Raking the seed bed smooth was an important step in planting a garden. Kelley raised garden vegetables for market while he lived and farmed here on the banks of the Mississippi River. He hired a gardener to tend his fruits and vegetables.

In the fall, visitors can also help with the harvest. Shocking corn was a common method of corn harvesting in Kelley's era.

Using up-to-date implements of the 1860s, a Kelley Farm guide cultivates Improved King Philip corn. Faced with the prospect of hoeing a five-acre corn field, visitors quickly learn the advantages of horse-drawn farm implements.

A "new" flop-over hay rake pulled by oxen or horses is used to rake hay. One farmer with these new tools could do the work of 10 farm laborers using hand rakes.

When visitors come to the Kelley Farm today, they experience the work of farm children first hand. This hands-on learning experience leaves a lasting impression. Children come to know that a farm produces food from plants and animals. It also leaves children with a clearer understanding of all the work farm children had to do.

Some of the hay is used to feed the Kelley Farm cows and calves. The milk cows are Line-back Devon-Durham crosses. These crossbred cattle were a common sight on Minnesota farms in the mid-19th century. One cow could provide enough milk for a small family. The milk was used for cooking and the cream for making butter. The more milk cows you had, the more butter you could make. The more butter you made, the more you could sell in town or to people coming to the farm for produce.

Kelley had over 200 chickens in the 1850s. In those days, Kelley did not have to ship his eggs to town. People came to his farm to buy eggs and chickens. The Silver-Grey Dorking and the Dominique (shown here) were popular 19th-century chicken breeds.

Farm women were often responsible for preserving the produce from the kitchen garden. At the Kelley Farm, old methods of pickling and preserving are demonstrated in the house.

A Girl Scout samples some of that good old wood stove cooking, made from period recipes from the 1883 Buckeye Cook Book and other sources. Pioneer Cakes and Cookies, a day when visitors can sample 19th-century sweets, is a popular event.

By the mid-1860s, the self-raking reaper began to replace that old harvesting method. In 1986, the restored 1887 McCormick Daisy reaper cut its first crop in about 100 years. By peeling off layers of dirt and grease and looking under bolts and metal parts, we were able to identify the original paint colors. Kelley was a staunch advocate for labor-saving implements. After watching a sulky plow demonstrated at the 1866 Minnesota State Fair, Kelley wrote: "Won't it be fun to be a farmer when we can ride while plowing, drilling in the seed, reaping and mowing ride while raking hay, and if fortune favors us, we can ride to prosperity." He had great faith in the power of technology to make farming an easier, more pleasant occupation. Visitors see changes in technology, like the switch from the grain cradle to the reaper, to understand why Kelley welcomed these labor-saving implements.

Molasses was an important source of sweetening on the prairie. In the fall, sorghum is pressed with a horse-powered sorghum mill. Then the juice is boiled down to make molasses.

Each November, people at the Kelley Farm count their blessings as thousands of visitors learn something about farming in Minnesota's history and about Oliver Kelley and the National Grange. A barn full of hay, a granary stocked with choice cereals and a corn crib piled to the roof are evidence of another successful season. Just as work for the season comes to an end, we begin again to plan for the following year.

Oliver Kelley experienced these problems himself as he farmed his land in Minnesota. In 1867, while working part time in the Post Office in Washington, D.C., to help pay his farm debts, Kelley began organizing the National Grange. He organized Granges from his Minnesota home throughout the 1860s, and he met with great success when the Grange spread like wildfire throughout the nation in the 1870s.