Farm museum gives kids personal taste of pioneer life

By JACK HOPKINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

While some people look to the future, others try to make sure the community doesn't forget its past.

Lori Ramsey is one of them.

She manages the Pioneer Farm Museum just north of town on Route 161. The non-profit, historic facility features homestead cabins built in the 1880s and is designed to give student groups and the public a look at what pioneer life was like.

Students sometimes spend the night sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor of the old cabins and take part in pioneer chores -- milking goats, churning butter, scrubbing clothes by hand -- during their visits.

"We try to keep it as true to the pioneer lifestyle as possible. There's no electricity and no video games unless they sneak hand-held ones into their sleeping bags," says Ramsey.

"When they get up in the morning after sleeping on the floor, we ask them if they were comfortable and if they were cold." The kids invariably tossed and turned and weren't exactly warm. "Welcome to pioneer life," says Ramsey.