Invisible Compass: Atlanta History Center: Smith Family Farm

Since I had never been and neither had they my grandparents and I decided as part of their visit on their last day in town to make a trip over to the Atlanta History Center to check out what they had to offer. And actually they have quite a bit to offer.

The History Center is on a plot of land that consists of a nature trail, an historic farm, The Swan House and the History Museum itself and also includes the Margret Mitchell House (of Gone With the Wind fame) which is located at a separate location in Midtown, but you have 10 days to use your passes to visit.

We started off at The Smith Family Farm, a collection of buildings from around 1845 that were relocated from their original home on North Druid Hills Rd. in Atlanta. The History Center has done a great of giving adding ambiance to the exhibit by making it into a real semi-working farm on the site, including a couple of actual areas where they are growing vegetables, herbs and the like.

They also had these cuties. Their own little mini-flock of sheep and goats. Including a funny little baby goat that kept getting up in their trough to eat his food.

It's a fairly immersive experience, you are free to walk from building to building and even through the vegetable gardens at your own leisure.

In addition to the farm building and the black smith building they also had the actual house from the farm, called The Tulie Smith House.

Walking through the house they have a couple of people millling around in period clothes doing various household activities to add to the authenticity of the experience. When we were there, there was a woman sewing at the table, but I felt weird taking her picture so I don't have any photos of that.

As we came to the back of the house there was this beautiful antique writing desk. I love that they added the details to it by putting little vials and fake confederate money in the slots. And actually I would love to own something like this one day in my own house.

As a southern tradition of the time the house was built, the kitchen was in a separate out building from the home. Walking into the kitchen you could immediately smell the near 175 years worth of fires that had been stoked in the hearth (and I believe they still occasionally cook in it) and the room was ornamented with herbs from the garden dangling from the ceiling to dry.

In addition to the kitchen they also appeared to have a meat house for smoking their meats, as well as a separate building for cleaning dishes.

As inevitably happens with many historic buildings of this era in the south,the last building you come to is the slave cabin from the farm and the back garden. The cabin is fairly stark (as one would expect to be authentic to slave quarters on a farm) and mostly filled with large posters depicting information about living and working conditions of the slaves, who would have mostly been the ones that would have been working and tending to the kitchen, meat house and farm that we saw on the property.

After finishing up with the farm we walked through the grounds of the history center, which are full of natural beauty and greenery.