Cast iron Restoration at Heritage Farm Museum and Village

By Katherine Bowers

Heritage Farm Museum and Village is a unique facet within the West Virginia as it serves as a testament to Appalachian Heritage and the impact a family can make on an entire community. Mike and Henriella Perry wanted their children to grow up away from the city and the family began their hobby of antiquing. This hobby has led to a unique historic site that has an array of museums, historic buildings, and a petting zoo for families to enjoy and celebrate Appalachia.
 
The amount of artifacts on display at Heritage Farm is near overwhelming; visitors and docents alike find new artifacts everytime! During my service year at Heritage Farm I have had the privilege to see some unique artifacts firsthand while working on creating a comprehensive way of cataloging all of the items on display. During the inventorying process I realized that some of the artifacts on display in the Progress Museum and Vittles needed to be restored to their original luster. With support from Heritage Farm I led a Civic Service Project to restore cast iron artifacts.
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Cast iron artifacts before restoration began.

​This project took place in early April 2019 and I was lucky to have two docents, Josh Wilson and Matthew Stanley, help for the entire day. The day was filled with laughs, but also quick problem solving and lots of frantic waving in front of a fire alarm. We were fortunate to have a fully functioning kitchen to reseason all of the cast iron artifacts. We ended up with an assembly line with one of us washing the cast iron pans, another drying with a towel and placing on a burner, and the final member slathering the artifacts in Crisco and placing them in the oven. This process would cause a lot of smoking from the oven because of the grease burning up and making the cast iron fully seasoned. The smoke would roll out when the oven was opened, thankfully I had prepared by acquiring fans and ensuring all of the windows were opened. Thankfully, it was a quiet day at Heritage Farm so the alarms continuously turning on did not impact guest experiences. 

The greatest success of the day was the refurbishing of a gigantic cauldron that is on display in the Progress Museum. A few months prior I discovered that water had been leaking through the chimney and collecting in the cauldron. This left the cauldron covered in rust and required some ingenuity on properly cleaning a.k.a. an electric drill with a scrubbing attachment.  The next challenge was finding a way to season the cauldron as it was too large to fit inside of the oven and so we set the burners on high and kept our fingers crossed it would work! Which thankfully it did!

This Civic Service Project was a great success in preserving 20+ cast iron artifacts that had been neglected for a while, but it also allowed myself and the docents to feel apart of the history and the continuing site narrative of working to save and preserve Appalachian Heritage.