Weighed in at 25 lbs.
The Museum commemorates the fishing heritage of the Atlantic coast of Canada. Housed in brightly painted red buildings, with floating vessels at wharf side.
This is a long blog so I am going to just post pix and write and not proof read this tonight. I have things to do, mainly visit. LOL
Rog and his seafaring friend
While wooden shipbuilding lapsed in other parts of Nova Scotia with the arrival of steamships, Lunenburg yards specialized in fishing schooners which remained competitive until the 1920s. The most famous was Bluenose built in 1921, a schooner which brought in record catches and won the International Fishermen's Trophy.
The original Bluenose was designed by William Roué and built by the Smith and Rhuland Shipyard in Lunenburg. She was launched at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on March 26, 1921, as both a working fishing schooner and a racing ship. This was in response to a Nova Scotian ship's defeat in the International Fishermen's Race for working schooners established by the Halifax Herald newspaper in 1920.
The results of W.J. Roue's efforts was a sleek looking craft, designed to meet the race rule specifications of 145 feet overall maximum length and racing trim water line length not exceeding 112 feet.
Bluenose soon proved to be an excellent sailing vessel and after a season fishing on the Grand Banks, she defeated Elsie (out of Gloucester, Massachusetts), returning the International Fishermen's trophy to Nova Scotia. During the next 17 years of racing, no challenger, American or Canadian, could wrest the trophy from her. These racing successes earned Bluenose the title "Queen of the North Atlantic".
There was no rest for the champion. When her full sails were not speeding her to the finish line, they were racing her to the fishing grounds where she toiled as a salt banker. As Lunenburgers, and their country, faced the harshest of depressions, the Bluenose was a spirit lift, a beacon in an era of gloom. As she aged, it seemed she might fade away and in fact, when she met her watery grave hauling freight near Haiti in 1946, many feared it was the end of an era.
In the early 1960's the brewing firm of Oland and Sons was planning to build a replica of a Nova Scotia fishing schooner to help promote their new product, Schooner Beer. The result was Bluenose II, built from the original plans in the original shipyard by some of the same craftsmen who had given Bluenose her magic. The keel was laid on February 27, 1963, and she was launched on July 24 of the same year.
Bluenose II was sold to the government of Nova Scotia for $1 and serves as a goodwill ambassador, tourist attraction in Lunenburg, and symbol of the province.
Bluenose II is not allowed to race. It was decided at the outset that she would never jeopardize the reputation of the original Bluenose. However, ships will occasionally test her speed by assuming the same course when she is seen passing; like her namesake, she moves like the wind. Her interior however is very different, having comfortable quarters, a chart room and a spacious salon in the areas where salt and fish were originally stowed.
The majestic image of the Bluenose has adorned the Canadian dime since 1937. She has been portrayed on three postage stamp issues including a fifty cent stamp in 1928 and appears on the Nova Scotia licence plate. The Bluenose legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of Canadians!
We had a great morning at the wharf and the museum.
We had lunch in town. At the museum we were told how back in the day they salted the fish to preserve them and to experience that salted fish today one would go to a restaurant and order fish cakes. So I order fishcakes and Rog ordered Mac and cheese with lobster. Both dishes were very good.
Then for the afternoon we decided since learning Rog's great grandfather was a farmer here that we would head down the road to an 1816 working farm museum. It was a wonderful experience. It was truly a working farm with period dressed docents to help explain all.
Ross Farm Museum is a window into the past of Nova Scotia’s rich agricultural history with many things to see and do that the whole family will enjoy.
The museum is a living, working, farm museum depicting 150 years of agriculture in Nova Scotia. We are a single family upland farm on land originally granted to Captain William Ross. Ross Farm Museum is still being farmed with Oxen, the way it was in the late 1800s. In Rosebank Cottage, the original home of the Ross family built in 1817, you may see food being prepared over an open fire, straw hats being woven, wool or flax being spun, butter being churned, or many other skills being demonstrated that were daily chores for our forefathers, but are now almost lost.
There is a working blacksmith shop where hardware is produced for the farm and they shoe approximately 30 teams of oxen each year. There is also a working stave mill and cooperage producing barrels, the original workshop where products such as butter churns, spoons, buckets and even snow shoes are made. You also might have a chance to take part in a class in our one room school.
This is the one room school house
Here I am studying hard.
We took the horse drawn wagon to the lower part of the farm and walked back up looking at everything. This is a team of Canadian horses. They were designated a breed in 2005.
This is the pumpkin patch. Students come and plant them and in the fall they come back and pick their pumpkins. Fun
This is a hay field. It is planted for the hay cutting contest in the fall. The men do it by hand with a scythes.
A cooper is a tradesman who constructs and repairs barrel, casks, and other similar wooden vessels, as well as various other wooden utensils and implements. The trade of coopering has been practiced in Nova Scotia since the seventeenth century, probably introduced by early Europeans fishermen whose fleets landed along the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
Before the advent of power-driven coopering machines, all coopering was by hand, using unique hand tools to perform the intricate work required to construct a barrel. Each part of the coopered article was made separately by hand, and the parts assembled to make the finished product. These barrels and crates were use to ship everything in those days, like the cardboard box of today.
The barrels and buckets that he has made there. Also the tools used to cut the strips they use to band the barrels.
This is the wood he gets from the stave (saw mill) . They are heated in a wood stove in a special compartment and placed in the form below to form the curve of the barrel.
The band he is placing on this barrel are strips of wood, notched and overlapped. The strips are in pic below.
These are the strips he places around the barrel to hold the wooden slats in place. He will soak what he needs about 24 hour before he uses them. There was no metal used in the making of these barrels. It was amazing to watch.
The oxen hauling the slats to the cooper
They have bells on their necks and I asked why. Was told it was because back in the day the roads were very narrow in wooded areas and the bells could be heard for miles away. This way you could find a place to pull over to let the other team by. Also, when they stopped for the night they would not tight the team up they would let them graze at will so with the bell they could locate the animal quite easily. Today it is prestige, who can have the best made, sounding and looking bell. It is a neat sound to hear as we were walking around the farm.
He is sawing the slats for the barrels
Here you can see the whole mill with the place where they cut the round tops for the barrels.
Veggie garden with the little patch of green in the left hand corner in the front of the pic is flax. They plant this to demonstrate the making of linen.
The wood carver was there making spoons. This shows the steps in spoon making. The wood, the board, the first spoon shape is made by using an ax, the second uses a chisel, and the last spoon the shaping is done with sandpaper.
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