Burnside Plantation

Especially great to visit during Blueberry Festival each July. Garden is in full bloom and the smell of smoking meats fills the air. Plus, blueberries in just about every form.

We came here on Community Day in April and I guess coming to a place like this so early in the Spring, one needs to remind thyself about potential as opposed to what you’re actually seeing.
Let me explain.
They’ve got a large garden that naturally in April is nothing more than rocks and dirt so you have to imagine what it would look like later on in the year. On the gate they do have a breakdown of what was planted in days of yore but again, you need to use your imagination.
There is also a small corncrib next to a few old rusty wheelbarrows that are falling apart.
There is the main house on the grounds, the Burnside house, that is sparsely furnished at best and I have read that at certain times of the year you can fully tour it but on Community Day they have tables and chairs on the ground floor for kids arts and crafts, so no tours.
The main barn has three parts. The main upstairs part has a collection of older farm equipment along with some pictures of when the building was moved to the site where it currently stands. (No, it’s not original to the property by a long shot)
The downstairs on the left has a high horsepower wheel that is very interesting and along the lines of what you would see at Mount Vernon in the sixteen sided barn.
The bottom right houses the stables where the City of Bethlehem keeps their horses for the police’s mounted patrol.
The officer on duty that day was great with answering questions from both adults and children about their work with the horses.
An unfortunate example of a real turnoff were the women in the Summer Kitchen.
They were making some kind of soup/​stew that day and several people, myself included, were asking questions and by-​in-​large they kept giving everyone the Sgt. Schultz answer.
That was a real drag but it also wasn’t surprising since they seemed more interested in doing what they were doing as opposed to being bothered by the public.
This year was the 3^rd annual Community Day and to be honest even though I live only about a ½ mile from where this takes place I really hadn’t heard about it because they poorly promote it. Based on the number of people that we saw I can tell that I’m not the only one who falls into that boat.
Maybe next year we’ll come back and the women in the Summer Kitchen won’t be so grouchy or maybe we’ll try to take part in some kind of activity/​event there this summer that will show this place off when things are fully cooking.
But in the meantime I can’t go more than three stars along with giving this place a grade of incomplete.

Cool little place to visit if you’re looking for history while visiting Bethlehem. We came by on Community Day, so everything was free and there were tours and demonstrations going on.
The barn tour was interesting, as was seeing how they used to use horses to power a machine that separated the wheat for bread. The house tour was informative. There were 4 ladies in period dress making some typical food and drinks from early Moravian times. I only wish we could’ve sampled them! It was torture watching them eat and drink it while we just sat there.
The highlight of the plantation though, for me, wasn’t any of that. It was the garden. Now, it wasn’t in bloom, but the diagram they had of it and the looks had me literally drooling. They had details about what was planted everywhere, and it was everything from potatoes to leeks to gooseberries and rhubarb. Wowza. I REALLY wished I could’ve been there during the summer!
Check it out!