Hale Farm & Village

Despite the amount of rain recently making the ground very wet and mushy, Hale Farm was a refreshing experience! We went to an Ox Talk led by some interns who were clearly passionate about what they did there, as well as visited the other animals located throughout the farm. All the interpreters that were running craft stations in the barns and houses — candle-​making, spinning yarn, making brooms — were very helpful in answering the questions of adults and children alike.
For those of you who haven’t visited since you were schoolchildren, I would highly recommend revisiting someday soon!
(Also, there are dozens of tiny, tiny frogs roaming around in the gravel. They are smaller than crickets and fun to attempt to catch!)

My husband and I haven’t been there since elementary school. We took our boys this past Saturday and had such an awesome time! All of the curators working each site were informative and really easy to talk to. Especially the black smith and the log cabin curator. I would recommend this tour to anyone with elementary aged kids or older. We had way more fun than I expected.

Was here for a wedding recenty and its absolutely beautiful! Feels a bit in the middle of no where but it’s completely worth it for the privacy and intimacy of nature surroundings. Would definitely like to come back for a nature tour or wine tasting.

I went to this place with a thirteen year old kid who looked ten which seems to make sense since kids are the ones who might be interested in places like this. I was told by the money-​grabber ticket lady that a thirteen year old was ‘an adult’ and had to pay the adult rate to get into the place. So, a thirteen year old kid costs double what a twelve year old kid costs. 19^th century bastards. Back in the day, they’d hang somebody for shit like that. I paid.
So I go in and we walk up to this house which is part of the museum and some lady I recognize from the Acme in Fairlawn dressed like dinner theater Dorian Gray gets mad that this ‘child’ entered her house without an invitation. I told her that the thirteen year old girl was a full paid woman in these parts and that she was in fact ‘my woman’ which threw this part-​time school marm into a tizzy… so we fled this lady’s home even though it looked cool inside and might have been fun to sniff around.
The next house housed a bitty who carried on because we entered her ‘parlor’ and I got beligerent and told her that her house was old anyway. She lectured me like this was a fun little exercise but it wasn’t and I was suddenly unsure if I was allowed to even look at any of this stuff.
Me and my full-​grown middle school compatriot dared to go into a print shop and the guy asked me what he could do for me. I tried to break through the historical interpretation bullshit and I said, ”Dude. we just want to see what this looks like.” He wanted to know if I needed anything printed. Sigh. What was I supposed to do, place an order for some runaway slave poster or something? Huh?
Back out in the relative peace of the courtyard some woman told us what a treat it was that we could see the wedding today between ol’ Buck Tanner and the young Hopperstrap girl and I said, «We can’t look at any of this museum but we can go to some strangers’ wedding? How does that make sense?» She told me it was joyous day. Of course she got in for free. And, she told us, there’s free cake too. Free cake.
I figured they’d hit me and the kid up for a gift of a skinned weasel or a cattle which I plum forgot to brang with me to the wedding so we skipped it but followed some people out back of the church we dared not enter and scored some cake anyway.
It was like Irish soda bread and had currants in it or some kind of double-​dried raisins and we coughed through it without water or buttermilk or whatever damned drink we should have known to ask for. I got my ten dollars worth out of it even though it was for shit.
In the end we dodged into the glass-​making exhibit and nobody jammed us or expected us to know what the hell is going on and it was cool to watch. Glass making, it turns out, is worth paying twenty to see up close.
Hale Farm is awesome for somebody but not me. There’s a lot of cool stuff to see but you may or may not be allowed to see it. What a pisser.

This is a beautiful piece of Ohio history hidden in a quiet valley between Akron and Cleveland that shouldn’t be missed. I enjoyed watching what appeared to be a group of school children watching and listening to the interpreters in period costume. I’m sure some sparks for learning have been set off from this place over the years — very nice indeed!

Despite a decade of budget cut-​backs and some rather narrow-​minded planning, Hale Farm remains among Ohio’s best living history museums.
The center of the expanding «village» is the Hale Homestead, one of the first brick homes in what was then Portage County (now Summit County) built in 1825 on 500 acres.
While not a huge fan of «historical interpreters dressed in period costume» it can be fun for those unfamiliar with history or children with short attention spans. The period they’ve chosen to «preserve» is 1850 or so, in strict adherence with the adjacent CVNP.
The visitor’s center is incongruously housed in a mash-​up building, an attempt I suppose at blending modern and period. Fail. That is the only slip, though; the rest of the buildings and grounds is wonderfully thought-​out and maintained. It won’t take more than an hour or so to see the entire Village, although you could easily spend the better part of a day there and learn much more.
I love the glass-​blowing, the blacksmith shop, the church, and the way the «village» sits in the gentle valley. Take a walk above the pasture and sit. You just may be transported back to the canal era. An especially nice way to visit Hale Farm is to take the train, getting off at Indigo Lake, then hiking two very easy miles over the ridge to the Village. That keeps a car out of the Village, gets you some exercise and helps immerse you in the wonders of this beautiful land. (Hey, Western Reserve Historical Society? Howzabout you include that on your directions list on the website? Huh?)