A Stone Clothes Press

Here's an interesting use of a pile of rocks: it's a clothes press. The Funen Village in Odense, Denmark is an open-air museum of authentically reconstructed farm buildings, homes and their furnishings. I took a walk around the grounds where old-style agriculture is being practiced by museum staff, and stepped across the thresholds of rooms that once saw the daily activity of family life.

Some thirty buildings dating from the 17th to the 19th century were moved to the museum from various sites in the Funen region. A village milieu comprising half-timbered houses, flower gardens, fenced enclosures and livestock is surrounded by cultivated fields.

 The stone-cobbled courtyard has a sloped catchment basin for manure runoff.

Open year-round, the museum becomes especially lively in the summer months with craft activities and outdoor theatre offerings. The leaf buds were just beginning to open on some trees when I was there last week. The old jail has 4' thick dry stone walls.

Elin's Uncle Lars tries out a pair of stilts in the schoolyard. The school building was from the town he grew up in.