A Visit to Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum

Pasture with the 1750s Log Farm house in the background

September 22, 2018 was Smithsonian magazine's Museum Day, when free tickets are offered to various museums in the country. We happened to be in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that day, so we got tickets to visit the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum. While most of the buildings date later than the colonial period, the Log Farm section depicts Pennsylvania German life in the 1750s. This post will focus on the Log Farmstead.

The Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum is the largest museum dedicated to the history of the Pennsylvania Germans (or Pennsylvania Dutch, as they're often called, though they're not Dutch at all—the Dutch comes from mispronunciation of Deutsch, the German word for German). The museum depicts Lancaster County farming life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the village, which includes the many structures listed below, and the museum, which houses a collection of farming implements and other decorative arts pieces. In addition, the museum has an award-winning Heirloom Seed Program (growing plants, field crops, and vegetables that are now disappearing), and offers classes in folk art and driving of horses and oxen. It is in every way a living history museum.

The 1750s Log Farmstead includes a log house (two rooms), a pasture, two barns, a spring house, and a woman's garden:

The Log Farmstead

Log Farmstead kitchen 

Log Farmstead bedroom

Log Farmstead barn

Sheep in the barn

My kids favorite part of the whole village: this (gigantic!) hog was having the time of her life in the mud. According to one of the workers, she also loves to eat pumpkins whole.

Bulls in the pasture

This mare and her foal loved eating the Chinese chestnuts (buckeyes) we found growing nearby.

Inside the spring house

Woman's garden

Other buildings in the village include the original brick farmstead and Grossmutter house (circa 1830), a sexton's house (staffed by a leatherworker), a blacksmith shop (moved to the farm from Gettysburg, circa 1880), a farm machinery and tool barn, the Landis Valley House Hotel (built in 1856), the Maple Grove Schoolhouse (an Amish school built in 1890 about three miles from the museum), a country store (recreated to depict 1900), a firehouse, a tin shop, a tavern (recreated to represent a tavern circa 1800–1820), a gunshop, and some outbuildings.

If you're ever in the Lancaster area and would like to visit, the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum is open year round. More information is available at www.landisvalleymuseum.org.