Sign up for Garfield Farm Museum's Student Harvest Day

Garfield Farm Museum in Campton Hills is taking reservations from school groups for its annual Student Harvest Days from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30.

Children can connect with their rural heritage through period demonstrations of historic farm activities, such as candle dipping, rendering fat, flailing wheat, shocking and shelling corn, and making apple cider.

This year, the 1846 brick tavern turns 170 years old as the Timothy Garfield family first came to Illinois 175 years ago opening a country inn and expanding the farming that the first settler Sam Culbertson had started.

Harvest Days provides children and adults an opportunity to learn about the realities of our rural heritage. The historic demonstrations of 1840s household and farm skills remind us of the incredible amount of effort it took to survive in a non-mechanized world.

They also stimulate young minds to be creative in problem solving. Dona and Dan Benkert of the Folk-Lore Center in Naperville will perform traditional music of the mid 19th century with dulcimers and penny whistles.

Tours of the 1846 brick inn illustrate typical farm and country inn life. Tours of the museum's prairie reconnect visitors to nature and its resilience, as the last prairie flowers bloom and go to seed.

Reservations are required for Student Harvest Days and can be made by contacting the museum at (630) 584-8485 or email info@garfieldfarm.org. Students are $5 each and chaperones are $4 each. Space is limited.

On Sunday, Oct. 2, the museum will hold its annual Harvest Days for the general public from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost is $6 or $3 for age 12 or younger. Organized youth groups on Sunday are $5 under 13 years of age.

Garfield Farm Museum is at 3N016 Garfield Road, off Route 38, five miles west of Geneva. Visit www.garfieldfarm.org or www.facebook.com/GarfieldFarmMuseum/.