Old Sturbridge Village is a perfect destination for a DIY family

We geek-out on anything hand-made, so Old Sturbridge Village was a perfect spot for us to have some family fun.

I had never heard of Old Sturbridge Village before I read about it online. Of course, my husband Mark knew a lot about it. First, it’s in Massachusetts, his home state. Mark tends to be biased about anything and everything that was invented, created, or thought about in Massachusetts. And second, This Old House’s Norm Abram is a member of the OSV Board of Trustees.

“As a member of the OSV Board of Trustees, I know firsthand how important it is to maintain these authentic restorations.” — Norm Abram, This Old House

For the rest of us who don’t know OSV and geek-out on hand-made treasures, here’s what you’ll want to know. Old Sturbridge Village is the largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast. It depicts a rural New England town of the 1830s. So when you leave the parking lot and enter the village, you are walking back in time. One of the signs near the entrance states that Ohio was considered the ‘West’ during this time period.

And then you see animals that are from the time period in hand-made fenced areas. They’re called Heritage Breed and include chicken, sheep, pigs, oxen, and cows. That blows my mind that we’re seeing these animals before they evolved into what we know them as today.

Around the village there are more than 40 original buildings, including homes, meetinghouses, a district school, country store, bank, working farm, three water-powered mills, and trade shops on more than 200 acres. Some of the buildings are from the area, some were transported from other states and situated in the village. Villagers are costumed in period clothing and go about the day as if it really was 1830s. There was a woman in the little stone house making the mid-day meal for the farm hands. And she cooked in the hearth and baked in an oven where she used her hand to figure out the perfect baking temperature.

“I stick my arm in the oven and count to 15. If I can count to just that number, then the oven is hot enough. Every oven is different so every woman uses a different count at her house.”

There’s an arts and crafts area where they teach visitors young and old to dip candles and forge an iron hook. I have never been presented with the opportunity to forge anything, so I was (and still am) quite thrilled.

Old Sturbridge Village is amazing. A perfect way to show us early American history and they say it has been an iconic New England destination for nearly 70 years.

And since we visited OSV, I read in a biography of Walt Disney that Old Sturbridge Village was one of the places that Walt Disney visited when he was designing Disneyland.

Have you been to OSV? I’d love to know what you think.