Wellington Farm Park, near Grayling, plays out a Depression-era tale each Christmas season.

Cottony snowflakes drift down through the night as two workhorses pull your sleigh through a farm field to a small wooded settlement of Depression-era homes and workshops, enchanted with the clanging of a blacksmith hammering out rods from orange-hot metal.

Welcome to the world of Wellington Farm Park, just west of Grayling, where each December local actors take you back to 1932, when life was harder, but simpler, and things like oranges and new brooms were enough to make a merry Christmas.

“Farming by Candlelight” is performed every year before Christmas. It’s based on a true story from 1920, but Howard Taylor, the park’s owner, changed the date to ’32 because that’s the year the 30-acre park depicts. “We wanted to depict the Great Depression and that was the worst year of the Depression,” says Taylor, who opened the park in 1996 and wrote the play.

The story revolves around the vandalization of the church’s pump organ, which threatened cancelation of the annual children’s Christmas play. The play was a cherished annual tradition in Wellington, and the big holiday gathering, so townspeople were understandably upset—some even felt demoralized.

As you travel through the village (and the play), pairs of local actors convey the anger, concern and disappointment townspeople felt at the senseless act of destruction that affected them all.

At some stops, artisans work on different parts of the organ, learning as they go, and wondering if Christmas as they knew it could be brought back.

“It was an event that basically split the community, because half said it couldn’t be fixed and the other half said it could,” Taylor says.

Wellington was primarily a farming community in an area that had been heavily forested in the late 1800s and early 1900s. People here grew a lot of what they needed, and for cash crops they grew potatoes and clover seed, which was sold to pharmaceutical companies for the manufacture of medicines.

Wellington officially existed from 1881 to 1918, when it had its own post office. The settlement’s one-room schoolhouse continued to operate into the 1950s. Taylor is currently researching old records to determine what the community’s boundaries were, which will also help him figure out its population. “We’ve never been able to get a handle on that,” says Taylor, a retired teacher. “I’m drawing a map of probably about 12 square miles from an old tax roll I’ve acquired.”

The buildings that are now part of the exhibit were mostly recreated and include a home, grist mill, blacksmith’s forge, and a workshop. The church, which is where the tale-by-trail ends, was moved here from Stittsville, 26 miles away. The other original building was moved from Higgins Lake and is currently used for storage, but will eventually be a museum, Taylor says.

The post office was where the general store is now, and that’s where people park and enter for the start of the show.

The holiday season in 1932 was far simpler, and not just because of the lack of electricity. Gifts for children included oranges brought in by train to Grayling. In the grist mill, actors show how brooms were made to give to all of the women. The farms grew broom corn, which has straw-like strands from which seeds are combed out by pulling them through nails coming out of a board. Later, the brooms are attached to wooden handles.

At the end of the tour, you enter a home with a kitchen in which two women discuss the modern wonders of the time that they still do not enjoy, such as a radio and washing machine. They also serve homemade barley cookies and hot mulled cider.

“There were radios around,” Taylor says. “But in 1932, radio was only on for a portion of the day and [the signals] were all relatively weak. A couple of farmers here would’ve had a wind-charger and a radio with a 6-volt battery.”

The enchanting walk ends with the feeling of an old-time Christmas Eve, strolling up the steps to the country church, where you are treated to a short, heartwarming program.

Afterwards, you climb back onto the sleigh so the sturdy Percheron horses can pull you the quarter-mile back to the general store.
“Farm By Candlelight” will be presented on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 12-14. Reservations are highly recommended. Call 1-888-OLD-FARM, email howard@i2k.net, or visit wellingtonfarmpark.org for more information.