Thursday, June 28, 2018

"Peanut Day" open house begins at 5:30 p.m. today


Just a reminder this morning that it's "Peanut Day" at the Lucas County Historical Society Museum. The campus opens for tours at 5:30 p.m., free hotdogs and chips will be served from 6 until 7 p.m. in the Pioneer Barn and the Chariton Community Band concert will begin at 7 p.m. on the patio. Fresh-roasted peanuts will be served all evening in the Mine Gallery, where the roaster is located. Everything's free and everyone's welcome.

Bob Ulrich (left) and Jim Secor had begun the peanut-roasting process by the time I got to the museum at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday and were joined later by Rex Johnson. The roasting continued until late morning and will resume at mid-afternoon today.

There is no timer on the 1888 roaster, nor are there dials to control the heat. And each carton of raw peanuts (provided by Hy-Vee, thank you very much!) differs slightly. So the only way to do this is to babysit the roaster as it works, taste-test to determine when each batch is done, then bag the result. So what seems like a simple process --- is, but isn't.

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Ray Dittmer was back, also at 8:30 a.m., to continue the great honey bee relocation process. We'd been concerned that the colony had opened a subdivision in the void under the corn crib, but none were there when Ray took up a section of that floor.

So he vacuumed up bees that had gathered overnight under the oats bin and took them home to join their mates near Lacona.

Now Karoline and her crew have the task of cleaning and deploying chairs for tonight's concert and getting the barn back in order.

We'd like to think these events at the museum appear to guests to be almost effortless, but truth be told, they're not. Lots of people work long and hard to pull them off. So many thanks, once again, to one and all.



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