Day 96 - Montague to Orwell Village Loop - Two Far 2022 - Reunion Bound (the long way around)

July 14, 2022

Day 96 - Montague to Orwell Village Loop

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We took a ride today out to the Orwell Corner Historic Village. It was a small community which remained active until the 1960's and now has been maintained as a historical site as it would have been in 1895.

On the way, Kerry decided we should take the "scenic route" along the Montague River, which was a pretty ride, but had two miles of gravel road.

The gravel surface wasn't too bad, but when we got to this big hill, it was time for four on the floor. I really didn't want to ride uphill on rocks. Kerry was fine with walking this part, but we had to ride on most of it.

Fortunately, the unpaved surfaces totaled only about three miles today. Most of the roads were more like this.

Different varieties of potatoes have different colored flowers. We saw a lot of purple flowering potato plants today.

We did a fair amount of climbing on the way to Orwell.

At Orwell Village, we visited a few buildings.

This is the kitchen stove in the house which houses the store.

The one room schoolhouse built in 1895 and used until 1966.

Outside was the community well - apparently now dry. Several people tried pumping it without any success.

In the barn, these pigs were sound asleep.

And, nearby in the small animal barn, we met this goat who had given birth to three kids yesterday. There were two male and one female kids. The young employee in the barn told us that she would nurse the female, but not the two males.

When the little guys approached, she head butted them away. He said the staff was putting her on a milking stand to let them nurse.

I looked it up. (There is a surprising amount of information about goat raising online.) It doesn't seem to be an uncommon problem.

Inside the agriculture museum, we saw an interesting exhibit about "mussel mud". When the water was frozen over in the winter, farmers went out and dug up shells buried in the mud. They mussel mud was taken to the fields to be spread in the spring. It improved the soil by adding lime.

This is one of the forks with the long beam sunk to the bottom to dig out the mud.

I read this information about the decline of farming on PEI. Since it refers to the period from 1901 and 2001, I wondered how much more decline there had been in the last 20 years. I found that in 2020, the number of farms was down to 1353, covering 42.5% of the land. Less than 3% of the population are farmers now and most of those are over 55 years old. It makes me wonder what way of life future generations will bemoan the loss of in another hundred years.

On the way back to Montague, we saw a couple of large fields of cabbage. These cabbages were much more mature than the cabbages we saw in New Jersey in May. In one field, we saw several people scattered about and we wondered if they were checking to see if the field was ready for harvest.

Today's ride: 30 miles (48 km)
Total: 3,062 miles (4,928 km)

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