Curran Homestead

Programs: Blacksmith course-each 6-week course is limited to six participants. It's a beginner course introducing students to traditional blacksmithing methods using coal-fired forges hand tools and shop equipment. The curriculum includes safety discussions, materials and tools of the trader, fire starting and maintenance, heating the work, hammer blows and hammer control, measuring and marking, tapering into a square point, drawing out metal, forging square to octagonal and round, bending, twisting, forging a basic s-hook, a drive hook, screw-in/nail hooks, making a chisel, a punch, a drift, punching holes, flattening and spreading, and forging a spoon.

maple festival/irish celebration-"sugar from the forest" demonstrates to young and old how maple sap is turned into syrup as it was done over a century ago. Volunteers set up a 15-gallon evaporator over a wood fire stove inside the farm's sugar shack. Volunteers also offer tasting samples of ice cream covered with maple syrup, beans made with maple, and even maple flavored whoppie pies. A maple recipe book is offered free. Additional activities include demonstrations on the care and feeding of small animals, using blacksmith tools, and vintage farm tools and farm machinery.

harvest festival-the crops are in and the woodshed is full the october harest festival celebrates fall and the end of the growing seasons. Visitors choose the best scarecrow from entries constructed by local organizations, children are offered pony rides and discuss farm animals, the vintage cider press is available to crush some of this year's crop of apples, pick out and paint a pumpkin, check out the bee-keeping demonstration, take a tractor-drawn hayride, ride in a model t auto, visit the kitchen for home-made corn chowder and baked beans from the wood cook- stove. Special guests with their displays of vintage equipment were the maine antique power association and the maine antique tractor club.

we had an ice harvest re-enactment on field's pond and summer festivals. We offered a girl scouts workshop and hosted school field trips. We participated in open farm day.