Ryedale Folk Museum

The 5th of September was Harvest Day at the museum.  A 1940s Massey Harris Sunshine Binder was in use in the cornfield.  Take a look at the pictures and video below: CG (pics by Pete Gough)

Hey everyone!!! Its the last week of the summer holidays. Where has it gone?! Considering the cold Bank Holiday we had quite a good couple of days. This was when Rosa Mundi - Medieval Re enactors, came to the Museum. It was great fun working when they were here. As mentioned the weather was terrible!!! Also it is great to have the two new apprentices starting. Always good to have a couple pairs of extra hands. I know that they are both going to be fantastic. Autumn is nearly upon us. Sunday 5th September is our Harvest day. So come on up for a memorable day. See you all sometime. Little Em

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

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