CURRENT HOURS: Programs by reservation November-April
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 Sep 17 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Cider Doughnuts and Coffee | Tangen Home | |
| Wed Oct 1 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Victorian Hair Flowers | Flynn Mansion | |
| Wed Oct 8 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Fall Spice Blends for Home and Table | Drug Store | |
| Sat Nov 1 | 9 a.m.-noon | Blacksmithing Basics | Blacksmith | |
| Wed Nov 5 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Tea Sandwiches through Time | Flynn Mansion | |
| Sat Nov 8 | 1-4 p.m. | Basics of Woodstove Cooking | Tangen Home | |
| Sat Nov 8 | 1:30-4:30 p.m. | Blacksmithing Basics | Blacksmith | |
| Sat Nov 15 | 9 a.m.-noon | Blacksmithing Basics | Blacksmith | |
| Sat Nov 15 | 1-4 p.m. | Advanced Blacksmithing: Items for the Home | Blacksmith | |
| Sat Nov 15 | 1-4 p.m. | 19th Century Bread Baking | Tangen Home | |
| Wed Nov 19 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Quick Rolls and Butter | Tangen Home | |
| Sat Nov 22 | 9a.m.-noon | Blacksmithing Basics | Blacksmith | |
| Sat Nov 22 | 1-4 p.m. | Letterpress Printing: Menu Cards & Greetings | Print Shop | |
| Sat Nov 29 | 9 a.m.-noon | Introduction to Embroidery | Flynn Mansion | |
| Sat Nov 29 | 1-3 p.m. | Introduction to Tatting | Flynn Mansion | |
| Wed Dec 10 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Norwegian Christmas: Sandbakkels | Tangen Home | |
| Sat Dec 13 | 9-11:30 a.m. | Woodstove Cooking with Kids | Tangen Home | |
| Wed Dec 17 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Norwegian Christmas: Pepperkakor | Tangen Home |
Cider Doughnuts & Coffee
Victorians loved doughnuts for breakfast, for tea, and for snacks. Mix and fry this favorite fall treat doughnut on top of the woodstove, roll in cinnamon and sugar, and enjoy with coffee.
| Closed |
Tea Sandwiches through Time
Enjoy making and eating a series of tea sandwiches! Join us at the Flynn Mansion to compare historic recipes for a variety of sandwiches such as cucumber, roast beef, egg and chicken salad with more modern counterparts of the same flavors. Discover how our tastes have changed through time.
| Purchase |
Basics of Wood Stove Cooking
Do you have a wood burning stove at home that you’d like to cook on, but have no prior knowledge of how to do it? Do you just want to try cooking like your great-grandparents? Roll up your sleeves and make hearty meat stew, a vegetable side dish, bread, and a cake. Participants will learn the design of the woodstove and how to properly use it. After the meal is prepared, sit down to enjoy the food and ask last minute questions.
| Purchase |
19th Century Bread Baking
Looking to explore bread baking from scratch? Would you like to try baking in a wood burning stove? If so, try your hand at biscuits, muffins, yeast bread and cinnamon rolls in the 1876-era Tangen House kitchen. Afterwards, sit around the table and enjoy your creations while learning more about the house and the type of family that would have lived there.
| Purchase |
Quick Rolls and Butter
Discover a quick rise yeast roll recipe, just in time for those big family meals. Join us in the Tangen 1876 era kitchens to bake your tasty rolls in the wood-burning oven. Churn fresh butter to go with your creation and sit down to enjoy the results of your labor.
| Purchase |
Norwegian Christmas Sandbakkels
Norwegian traditions for Christmas often include this sugared cookie treat. Shaped and then baked in small tin tart pans; sanbakkels can be filled with fruit or cream or just eaten on their own. Join us in the historic kitchen at the 1876 Tangen House for a bit of Norwegian holiday fun.
| Purchase |
Wood Stove Cooking with Kids
Explore the Victorian kitchen, while instilling a love of cooking in your kids! Learn how to read a recipe, measure and mix ingredients, and roll out dough the old-fashioned away! Wash and dry dishes and bring in wood for the wood box. This basic woodstove cooking class is designed to get kids and adults busy in the kitchen with kid-friendly recipes and hands-on tasks. All youth must be accompanied by a paid adult.
| Purchase |
Norwegian Christmas Pepperkakker
Enjoy the tastes and smells of cardamom, pepper, cinnamon and cloves as you mix and bake this intense Scandinavian style of crisp gingerbread cookie in the 1870s woodstove.
| Purchase |
Please bring these items:
Victorian Hair Flowers
Ladies in the 19th century made shadow boxes, earrings, and pins from horse and human hair wrapped with wire in the shapes of leaves and flowers. Spend an evening in the Flynn Mansion to construct a simple brooch out of horsehair flowers to take home.
| Closed |
Introduction To Embroidery
Embroidery is an age old hand-craft that is seeing a return to popularity. Learn the basics of how to stitch a decorative piece and discover the relaxing quality of hand-stitching. Instructor will cover fiber choices and multiple basic stitches. Materials for a simple beginning project will be provided.
| Purchase |
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.
| Purchase |
Fall Spices for Home and Table
Cinnamon, anise, cloves, and nutmeg are all part of the smells of the season. In Victorian Iowa, these could be purchased at a Drug Store or General Store and used in baking, mulling cider, and making fresh potpourri for the house. Join staff in the drug store to sample the smell blends and then create your own spice mixture for a simmering potpourri to take home and a mulling bag/ball to use in your fall hot beverages to take home.
| Closed |
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. Small class size guarantees lots of one-on-one instruction and lots of time at the forge!
| Purchase |
You will make at least two of the following decorative projects for the home: candleholder, napkin ring, hook, decorative paper towel holder, letter opener. You will learn and practice these skills: drawing out metal, making decorative bends, forge welding (if doing rings), and more.
| Purchase |
Letterpress Printing: Menu Cards and Greetings
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 for an elegant menu card or a greeting card. Projects will be printed on 19th-century hand- and foot-powered proof presses.
| Purchase |
The Historic Skills Classes program is funded in part by the Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area.
11121 HICKMAN, URBANDALE • 515-278-5286
— THANK YOU TO OUR 2025 PREMIER PARTNERS —
Mary and Dale Andringa
Bayer Crop Science
BRAVO Greater Des Moines
Cole-Belin Education Foundation
Coons Foundation
Corteva Agriscience
Iowa Economic Development Authority
Iowa Machine Shed
John Deere
Kemin Industries
MidAmerican Energy Company
Nelson Foundation
R.W. and Mary Nelson
Prairie Meadows
Todd and Connie Rueter
Charles and Kathy Safris
Stephen Smith
Sukup Manufacturing Co.
City of Urbandale
