Want to know more about something you saw at Living History Farms, interested in learning a new skill, or just want to have fun with friends and family? Historic Skills Classes let you work in small groups to learn a specific skill or trade that was common in centuries past, like blacksmithing or baking in a wood-burning oven. With a small class size, you are guaranteed individualized instruction and plenty of opportunity to participate.
FOODWAYS | TEXTILES | TRADES |
Date | Time | Class | Location | |
Wed Jan 22 | 6-8 p.m. | Pickles & Sauces | Conference Center | |
Sat Jan 25 | 9-11 a.m. | Beginning Crochet | Visitor Center | |
Sat Jan 25 | 9-11 a.m. | Biscuits & Gravy | Tangen Home | |
Sat Jan 25 | 12:30-2:30 p.m. | Comfort Foods on a Wood Burning Stove | Tangen Home | |
Sat Jan 25 | 1-3 p.m. | Beginning Knitting | Visitor Center | |
Wed Jan 29 | 5:30-8 p.m.. | Modern Cast-Iron Cooking | Conference Center | |
Sat Feb 1 | 9-11:30 a.m. | New! Wood Stove Cooking with Kids: Breakfast | Tangen Home | |
Sat Feb 1 | 12:30-2:30 p.m. | Introduction to Tatting | Visitor Center | |
Wed Feb 12 | 6-8 p.m. | New! Victorian Date Night | Flynn Mansion | |
Sat Feb 15 | 9-11a.m. | Bacon, Cornbread, and Fresh Churned Butter | Tangen Home | |
Sat Feb 15 | 12:30-3:30 p.m. | New! Victorian Flavors: Chocolate vs. Spice | Tangen Home | |
Sat Feb 22 | 9-11a.m. | New! Cinnamon Doughnuts | Tangen Home | |
Sat Feb 22 | 12:30-3:30 p.m. | 19th Century Bread Baking | Tangen Home | |
Sat Feb 22 | 12:30-2:30 p.m. | Spinning with a Drop Spindle | Visitor Center | |
Sat Mar 1 | 9-11a.m. | Victorian Spa Day | Drug Store | |
Sat Mar 1 | 12:30-2:30 p.m. | Letterpress Printing | Printshop | |
Wed Mar 5 | 6-8 p.m. | New! Old Dishes Meet the Modern Kitchen | Conference Center | |
Wed Mar 12 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | New! Exploring Old Cookbooks | Conference Center | |
Sat Mar 22 | 9a.m.-noon | Blacksmithing Basics | Blacksmith | |
Sat Mar 22 | 12:30-3:30 p.m. | Homemade Pie in a Wood Burning Oven | Tangen Home | |
Sat Mar 22 | 1-4 p.m. | Advanced Blacksmithing: Boot Scraper | Blacksmith | |
Wed Mar 26 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Irish Soda Bread & Colcannon | Tangen Home | |
Sat Mar 29 | 9a.m.-noon | A Full Irish Breakfast | Tangen Home | |
Sat Mar 29 | 1-3 p.m. | Introduction to Embroidery | Visitor Center | |
Sat Apr 5 | 9a.m.-noon | Blacksmithing Basics | Blacksmith | |
Sat Apr 5 | 1-4 p.m. | Advanced Blacksmithing: Items for the Home | Blacksmith | |
Wed Apr 9 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Scones & Tea | Tangen Home | |
Sat Apr 12 | 9a.m.-noon | Broommaking: Round Brooms | Broomshop | |
Sat Apr 12 | 1-4 p.m. | Advanced Blacksmithing: Camp Tripod | Blacksmith | |
Sat Apr 26 | 8:30a.m.-1:30 p.m. | Basics of Pioneer Hearth Cooking | 1850 Farm | |
Sat Apr 26 | 1-4 p.m. | Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner | 1900 Farm |
Pickles, apple butter, and ketchups were generally canned for long term preservation. But many of these recipes are easily adapted to shorter-term storage for the 21st-century fridge or freezer! Join us in our modern kitchen to mix up a few of our favorite historic recipes for pickles, fruit butters, and sauces to take home for your own fridge.
Canceled |
In 19th century Iowa, people often needed a hearty breakfast to start the day. Share in the tradition by joining staff at the 1876 Tangen House to mix and bake a fluffy baking powder biscuit in the woodstove. Then stir up a milk-and-sausage gravy in a cast iron skillet to go over the top. Scrambled eggs on the side and a pot of coffee round out the morning’s cooking.
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Join us for “stick to your ribs” food cooked or baked on a wood stove in the 1876 kitchen. You’ll make homemade egg noodles for chicken and noodles, fancy mashed potatoes, a buttery vegetable side dish, and a fruit crisp dessert. Then everyone will sit down to enjoy their culinary projects.
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Virtually indestructible, cast-iron cookware was a staple of 19th century kitchens. The original non-stick pan, a well-cared for cast iron skillet is one of the most versatile tools in any kitchen. Learn to use your great-grandma’s skillets and kettles on an electric stove in our modern kitchen. Explore different cooking techniques while learning the basics of seasoning, cleaning, and caring for cast-iron pots and pans. Feel free to bring your cast iron cookware along! Class will be taught in a MODERN kitchen.
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Join our cooks in the Tangen Home kitchen for a hearty kid-friendly breakfast. Kids, with their adult, will explore chopping, measuring and mixing tools and learn how a wood stove made cooking different in the past. We will bake an egg and hashbrown casserole and a sweet breakfast bread, cook up a fruit compote, and fry tasty doughnuts. Children must be accompanied by an adult.
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Experience the romance of the Victorian era! Class is designed for couples of any sort (romantic, besties, or family), whether you’re 20 or 50 or 80! Design and make vintage-style valentines and write poems to go inside. Enjoy parlor games with (gasp!) kissing forfeits. Practice sending secret love messages with fan flirting and flowers. Sample foods considered to be aphrodisiacs through history. Take a lighthearted look at Victorian courting etiquette and go home with advice from famous love letters and historic sources.
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Learn a from-scratch cornbread recipe to bake in the 1876 Tangen Home’s wood-burning stove. Churn fresh butter while the bread bakes and whip in honey for a treat. To round out the morning, fry up bacon in a cast iron skillet to enjoy the best combination of 19th-century sweet and savory tastes.
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Join us for a battle of the flavors found in Victorian treats. Popular treats of the time incorporated a few chocolate frostings, candies, and drinks. But ginger cookies, spice cakes, and fruit sauces gave them a run for their money. Bake some of our favorite recipes highlighting both cocoa and spices. Taste-test chocolate types to find your dark chocolate tolerance. Consider spice cake pairings with fruit sauce. After creating several treats, sit down to enjoy them with your classmates.
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Victorians loved doughnuts for breakfast, for tea, and for snacks. Mix and fry a few of our favorite spiced doughnut recipes on top of the woodstove, then roll in cinnamon and sugar, and enjoy with freshly brewed coffee.
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Would you like to bake bread from scratch in a wood-burning stove? Try your hand at biscuits, muffins, yeast bread, and cinnamon rolls in the 1876-era Tangen Home kitchen. Then sit around the table and enjoy your creations while learning more about the house and the type of family that would have lived there.
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Transferring historic recipes to the modern kitchen can take some translation of measurements, ingredients, time and temperatures. Join us in our modern kitchen space to cook some of our favorite 19th century recipes, including quick bread and vegetable sides, while comparing the old text with modern techniques. Tips and tricks on Victorian terms, measures, and the elusive meaning of “bake til done” will be shared.
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Cookbooks in the 19th century were called “receipt books.” Many cooks supplemented these printed books with handwritten recipes. Church groups and women’s circles traded and published items. By the 20th century, newspapers, radio, and magazines provided even more possibilities. This class will not cook, but we will share examples of period books and handwritten recipes from the museum collection, then discuss how to translate measurements and directions. We will also make suggestions for where to find more historic recipes for your collection. You will create your own mini-recipe scrapbook to take home.
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Sweet and savory pies were common on the 19th century farm table. Join us for an afternoon of pie crust making with period ingredients such as lard for both a savory meat and vegetable pie and a seasonal fruit pie. Bake your creation in the woodstove and taste the results of your work.
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Enjoy a taste of traditional Irish food. Bake soda bread in the oven of a woodburning stove and cook the hearty cabbage and potato dish (colcannon) on the stove top. After you will sit down to taste your creations with some Irish butter.
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The “full Irish breakfast” developed from the need to give farmers a substantial plate of food to get them through a morning of heavy labor. From simple 19th-century porridge of the working class or meat and potatoes of the middle class, menu choices expanded and often varied regionally. Explore the idea of a “fry up” and prepare some of the dishes in a full Irish breakfast—including fried eggs, thick cut bacon, sausages, black pudding, grilled tomatoes, toasted soda bread, and potato pancakes—in the 1870s Tangen Home kitchen.
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Mix, roll out and bake traditional fruit tea scones in an historic kitchen setting at the 1870s era Tangen House. Pair it with butter, fruit jam, and a steaming cup of tea for an evening treat!
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Learn the basics of hearth cooking, while exploring how new settlers in Iowa produced, prepared, and preserved food. You will use 1850s era recipes to make your lunch. While your meal is cooking, tour the 1850 Pioneer Farm. After eating their meal and cleaning up, everyone will go home with copies of recipes, and information on how to care for their cast iron cooking utensils.
Note: You will be eating your meal around 12:30, so plan accordingly.
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Expand your cooking skills with a skillet-fried chicken meal on the wood-burning stove. Learn to control the stovetop temperatures by adding just the right amount of wood for frying—without burning the dessert in the oven—at the 1900 Farm House. You will brine, bread, and fry chicken on the stovetop and make two veggie side dishes, along with a sweet fruit dessert.
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Please bring these items:
This class will teach you several crochet stitches, how to select the correct crochet hook and yarn for projects, how to read a crochet pattern, how to switch colors in a pattern, and learn how to make Granny Squares! Leave with a crochet hook, some yarn to continue practicing, and several patterns!
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This class will teach you how to begin a knitting project with casting on, show how to do the basic knit and purl stitches, how to increase and decrease stitches, and how to read a knitting pattern. We will begin making a simple dish towel, and you will leave with your own knitting needles, some yarn, and several other beginner patterns!
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Tatting is a Victorian handwork technique which creates knotted lace for trimming linens or making doilies and dresser scarves. Get an introduction to the basics of holding a tatting shuttle and of using a tatting needle. Learn the basic double stitch and picots. Patterns and materials will be provided, go home with your own tatting shuttle and pattern.
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Interested in learning to spin wool? A drop spindle is a great place to start! Learn to process wool by cleaning and carding then begin spinning on a drop spindle. You’ll go home with your own carders, drop spindle, and some wool to keep practicing!
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Hand sewn embroidery has returned in popularity. Learn the basic decorative stitches commonly used including running stitches, lazy daisy, satin stitch, French knots and others. Materials for a simple beginning project will be provided.
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Do a little Victorian self-care bath potion and perfume making in the Schafer Drug Store. Create your own fragrant perfume, a fizzy set of bath salts, and a sugar scrub. Take them home in jars you decorate with custom labels.
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Get up-close and hands-on with the big printing machinery in the 1876 Advocate Newspaper Print Shop! Learn basic hand-setting of moveable type and see if you can proofread backward. Choose from selected historic engravings to complete a type layout, then load it into a press for printing. Projects will be printed on 19th-century hand- and foot-powered proof presses. You’ll take home several printed projects.
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This class will give someone with little or no metalworking skills a hands-on, fun, “be a blacksmith for a day” experience. Explore the basics of forge work in a blacksmith shop while making a decorative iron project to take home. Topics will include safety, proper use of tools and equipment (such as an anvil), and beginning techniques for shaping metal.
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Every 19th-century farmhouse had a boot scraper by the porch to remove mud or snow before entering the house. Even if you don’t have a farm, a boot scraper is a handy item. You will forge a useful boot scraper while learning metalworking skills.
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You will make at least two of the following decorative projects: candleholder, napkin ring, hook, decorative towel holder, letter opener. You will learn and practice these skills: drawing out metal, making decorative bends, forge welding (if doing rings), and more.
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Get swept up in our broommaking class! Use 19th century broommaking equipment to craft a small round cake tester on the foot-powered binding machines. Then apply those techniques to making a round hearth broom and a round kitchen broom. You are guaranteed to be a sweeping success!
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Get a workout as you learn historic blacksmithing techniques. Forge a large camp tripod that doubles as a rotisserie or decorative plant hanger (online retail $50-$120)! The finished project will stand 4-5 feet tall and is based on a Civil War-era design, great for campers or re-enactors. You’ll learn and practice these skills: drawing out metal, making eye bolts, and advanced forging techniques.
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The Historic Skills Classes program is funded in part by the Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area.