Ryedale Folk Museum

A week in and I have all ready got my first comment, (in the first week!) I have just about mastered the first part of managing a museum. Using a till! But to be honest I have allot more different sections to work on. The different sections I have mastered are:- - Open doors too the public. - Do the float for the till. - Open the gallery. - Hover and sweep the floor. - Open till and stock up shop. For the passed few days I have been on the till sorting out customers, and stocking the shop with the help of a colleague, (Barbara). And at the end of each day I learn the importance of locking up and closing the museum making sure we haven’t locked anyone inside.

Whalebones were often a feature of the farm gateway in the Ryedale area. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many farmers sons would go to sea with the whaling ships from the local ports such as whitby. The whalebones erected on the farm gateway were like a badge of honour, to show you had relatives at sea whaling. Please have a look at a previous blog post about a local man Wiliam Stockell, amongst his many adventures he spent time whaling. http://ryedalefolkmuseumarchive.blogspot.com/2009/05/eventful-narrative-of-william-stockell.html Jonathan Severs, B.A (Hons)

Being the Ryedale Folk Museum’s new Apprentice is ACE. I’ve learned in my three days so far to deal with the customers that enter and leave the grounds. Working on the till dealing with money as well as the admissions for the public. I have also learnt about the gallery and the different sections of art we do. I have been shown how to open the ‘ Fat Betty’s Café ’ and I have been able to study with the help of the crew and customers, some education of the museum before I even knew of its existence. I have even been given the pleasure to stock up the shop and use the labelling gun to do some pricing of the gifts that we sell and I had been given the opportunity ( which I choose to do so ) to organise the store room which took up allot of A, effort and B, time. I am helping with the ordering and the orders of gifts in the shop and the office. With the help of the team I’m sure I can cope.

Where could you go in a museum and see activities from completely different eras within yards of each other? Ryedale Folk Museum, of course. We had an excellent group of iron age re-enactors who were demonstrating different crafts from the period. These included wood-turning, pottery, weaving and textiles. Today, volunteers and staff were treated to a lovely dinner of stew, cottage pie, beetroot, and jacket spuds. Us blokes were even lucky enough to get a pint of Black Sheep. For afters - if you had room, was a smashing apple crumble and cream. Thanks very much to everyone who prepared that lovely meal. After dinner we got busy harvesting the cornfield. We got off to a slow start due to the weather, it was very overcast and drizzly before dinner, but we got the field done with the binder and stooked the sheaves. The binder probably dates from the 1940's, a Sunshine Massey Harris from Australia, and the tractor used to pull it is a MF 135 from the 1970's. Jonathan Severs

Mike Benson here letting you know how I get on with my research trip In The Search of Ordinaryness ...I'm looking for people and institutions that just do good work everyday to the point it becomes everyday..ordinary..not average..Where the gap between what they say and what they do is minimal..where everyone gets what they are about..where they are (my favorite word) surefooted. This research trip is the final part of my Clore Fellowship I'm off to British Columbia to a place called Bella Bella to stay with Harvey Humchitt and his wife. I'm also going to visit New York, Boston and Chicago! More to follow Bella Bella. 22 Sep 2009 It is around 14:00 hrs Canadian Pacific time. I’ve just got of the plane in a place called Bella Bella home of the Heiltsuk in British Columbia after travelling for 40 hours. On the plane was a woman and her teenage son, her bag had on a great first nation design with the words Heiltsuk honouring our women. I gather from her conversation she ...

Come and see the binder in action on Sunday at Ryedale Folk Museum. We will be pulling the P.T.O driven binder with one of the museum's collection of tractors. After the wheat is harvested the corn will be stooked and left to dry, then put in the shed until October when it will be threshed. The video below is from a similar binder in Carnew, Ireland. Jonathan Severs

RFM 2006.11.84 Most people will have heard in the media that it is 70 years since Germany invaded Poland. Everyone has a relative who took part in the war, and Ryedale Folk Museum is no exception. Bert Frank, the museum founder had a brother called Christopher (Kit) who perished in 1943 aged 25. Jonathan S

This is a video of a half size Morris Minor Pickup powered by a 125cc Kawasaki engine. Morris Minors, very nostalgic cars, will be at the museum in force on Sunday 6th September. Come and have a look at these lovely vehicles. The image above, from: http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-1960-1969/1960-Morris-Minor-custom-ggr.jpg will maybe go faster than the traditional model... Jonathan S