Findings

One of the best past times for a young boy, a grandmother and a curious cow is treasure hunting in an old 1840's rubbish trench. As you would imagine, there is lots of old china, eathernware and glass but there are bones too. Old mate is convinced he is digging up a Muttaburrasaurus. I initially tried to have a meaningful conversation about food and times but he started talking about "primary predators" and "dinosaurs of the eastern sea board" with such conviction that I decided his version was waaaayy cooler and exciting.

As for me, I get ridiculously excited when I find marbles and usually that's just the 20th Century kind but a couple of days ago I found this beautiful Bennington clay marble made in Germany in the mid 1800's.

About this time last year I found a bowl of a tragedy/comedy pipe. 

Since then I have found some pipe stem fragments in beautiful smooth kaolin clay. On one side is impressed the name "Glasgow" and on the other "Murray" (befitting don't you think, wink wink) and I'm guessing this is a Murray Pipe manufactured 1830-1861.

This is the bucket of broken glass and rusty metal that curious cow keeps knocking over! Back then so many everyday things came in pottery and glass. We have quite a few fragments from 1840s gin bottles and bottles of shoe polish that was used commonly to polish and blacken the stoves.

 There's bits of door and window hardware, files and rasps, pieces of buckets and old shoe heels....

This is my "faces" collection.

It's very easy to get side tracked in the digging, especially after some rain and chicken scratchings have revealed new things on the surface. But enough of that...I have elderberries to strip and ready for tincturing.