Ardenwood Historic Farm has become one of my family's absolute favorite activities for the weekend. It seems like most people associate this fantastic EBRPD park with its fall Harvest Festival, so it tends to be less crowded than Tilden's Little Farm. We had another lovely adventure this Saturday: we toured the Patterson House for the first time. Since my little girl is obsessed with trains, we pay special attention to train schedules where applicable. The Arden-Deer Park train runs on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday but it does NOT run on Saturday. We did manage to ride the train on a separate visit in April (see below), but we could not this weekend because we went on a Saturday. Like normal, we first headed to see the animals. The schedule at Ardenwood is really well developed. It seems like there is always something going on. We've managed to see an animal feeding almost every time we've gone, even when I wasn't planning for anything. This is nice, because (unlike Tilden) you cannot bring your own lettuce and celery to feed the animals; the farmers have specific diets for the animals, and they only let you feed the food that they provide to you. Even with this restriction, we seem to always get to feed the goats and the sheep. After that, we had a nice picnic in the shade around the Farmyard Cafe, and then we wandered around to see some of the gardens near the Patterson House. It turns out that we were right on time for a tour of the historic home! My husband was a hoss, and he watched the little one while I went on the tour, because she would not have done well in that situation. The tour is really not appropriate for 2-year olds. The house was originally built in the mid-1800s, but then added onto in 1889 as the family grew and became even more successful. This was one of the best tours of a historic home than I have ever been on. The tour guide was not too precious at all with the stuff in the house (almost all of it donated by the Patterson family). My favorite was that she played the actual 100+ year old victrola that the Patterson family used to haul up to the attic to play music from when they held impromptu balls on rainy days that were too nasty for any outside activities. The machine required no electricity; it was powered by a hand crank that wound it up, and it played 78 rpm records. That really made the history of the farm and the house come alive! Every time we come here, we see something new. I'm a huge fan! July visit (touring the house): April visit (riding the train):
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