Travel back in time with homestead farm activities at Chippewa Nature Center’s Fall Harvest Fest

Apple butter, cider, beekeeping, blacksmithing, candle dipping, arts and crafts, schoolyard games, and nature galore. Better yet, it’s all in one place. To help kick off the season of autumn, the Chippewa Nature Center invites the community to the Fall Harvest Festival on Saturday, Oct. 5 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

One of the nature center’s biggest events of the year, the Homestead Farm area shines in the fall season, showcasing autumn traditions from yesteryear. Typically, the event draws around 1,000 visitors throughout the day. The festival includes plenty of education and entertainment, including demos of crop harvesting, blacksmithing, cider making, woodworking, arts and crafts and more for all ages. 

Corrine Bloomfield is the historical interpreter at the Chippewa Nature Center, and works with school programming, and planning events at the Homestead Farm area. She’s also one of the event planners of the annual fall harvest festival. 

Jamie HockstraSwollen Fingers Band at Fall Fest

“Our first Fall Harvest Festival was held in 1975, the year our Homestead Farm was completed,” Bloomfield says. “The event ties in with our basic mission statement for the center. We want visitors to be able to connect with nature, especially on a fall day, and explore the 1800s homestead farm.”

The event lineup includes apple butter and apple cider-making demonstrations, blacksmithing, beekeeping and honey tastings, and candle-dipping. Educators will also be hosting workshops on heirloom gardening, seed demos and activities in the children’s garden, an archeology dig, and schoolyard games and children’s crafts in the schoolhouse. 

Visitors can try their hand at making rope, an herbal satchel, grinding corn, and more. There will also be fiber arts and crafts, and live music from Swollen Fingers String Band. Attendees can enjoy snacks or a lunch break with Studley Grange food concessions. 

Jamie HockstraBlacksmith Guild Demonstration

Bloomfield says the event is more than just a typical ‘cider and donut’ fall festival. 

“You can definitely come in, interact with nature, explore the farm, and there’s a lot of crafts and things to do, see, smell, and taste,” she says. “You’ll walk away, hopefully having learned a little something about life in the area in the 1800s, as well as having that nice fall feel that everybody looks forward to this time of the year.”

Bloomfield enjoys seeing families, friends, and individuals interact with the activities, each other, and mother nature. For some, it’s their first introduction to the nature center, but typically, not their last. 

“It gives people a great feel for the different things we do here, like the Fiber Arts Guild and the Oxbow Archeologists, they are both part of our organization,” she says. “It gives people a great introduction to who we are as an organization.”

The all-ages event runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is free for Chippewa Nature Center members, free for children under 18, and $5 for adults. Parking is free, and there is a short wagon ride providing shuttle rides from the lot to the Homestead area every 15 minutes.