Ecomusée d'Alsace: so viel zu erleben!

I promised to do a post about our other major visit last week: the Ecomusée d'Alsace. It's basically a village that has been recreated and is designed to represent the 'traditional,' pre-industrial style of life in Alsace in the countryside (and a bit in town). I believe there are now one or two families who live on premises and who are caretakers of the site, in addition to the people who simply work there.

Many of the buildings were moved from other sites. They were deconstructed and then reconstructed at the museum. One house, for example, was originally at Grussenheim, the village where my father-in-law grew up. Here's a rather typical example of a farmhouse:

They had animals of all kinds.

Goats:

I don't know what that one is doing. It kept pawing (hoofing?) at the other one.

Pigs:

And stork homes without storks:

It was a little late in the season for storks, so the pigeons had replaced them.

Plus there were arts and crafts of all kinds; a blacksmith:

A bandsaw:

What they use at T's house to saw the logs into furnace-size ones doesn't look that much different! Okay, it's not made entirely out of wood, but it's one that the neighbor built himself :)

For the next post, I'll talk about some of the fiber arts.