UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- How did we light our homes to "keep out the night" before electricity? How did we cool our food? Visitors to Penn State's Ag Progress Days, August 18-20, can tour the Pasto Agricultural Museum and get a taste of what life was like before gasoline engines and electricity.

"The museum is like a hands-on history book," says Jerome Pasto, museum curator and associate dean emeritus in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. "There's a story behind every item."

The museum houses more than 300 implements used for farming and homemaking. Items range from a 6,000-year-old clay sickle used for grain harvesting, to a charcoal-heated clothes iron, to a dog-powered treadmill used to churn butter and wash clothes. "Everything is operated by power from the muscles of humans and animals," says Pasto.

Sections of the museum are devoted to harvesting grain, cutting and handling hay, planting and harvesting corn, plowing and cultivating soil and caring for animals. One display focuses on ice harvesting, which provided winter work for rural people. Using horse-drawn ice plows, checkerboards were scored on frozen ponds, then cut in perfect blocks.

"Ice harvesting was a huge business at the turn of the century," says Pasto. "Trainloads of ice were shipped to Philadelphia and New York City to keep food cool in ice boxes. The horses wore nooses while working. If a horse fell in, people pulled the noose tight, leaving air in its lungs so it would float like a balloon. Then, everybody would grab the rope and haul the animal quickly to the shore."

Household displays include devices for washing clothes, from primitive wood plungers to "modern" clothes washers with lever-operated tubs and wringers. A collection of irons for pressing clothes includes flat irons, irons with heated inserts, some that burn charcoal and have chimneys and adjustable drafts, and one that is gasoline powered with a tiny carburetor.

Also on display is a handcranked ice cream freezer, invented by Mary Johnson in 1834. "It's one of three items in the museum whose concept was so great that it's lasted over 100 years," says Pasto. "Today's ice cream makers still work on the same principle."

The Pasto Agricultural Museum is arranged in chronological sequence to show technological progress. Many artifacts have been restored to working order so visitors can turn the cranks and pull the levers. The museum will be open to the public during all three days of Ag Progress Days.

To celebrate the 20th anniversery of the museum, everyone who has donated antiques to the museum (over 100 living donors) has been invited to the Ag Alumni Annual Meeting and luncheon on August 18 at Ag Progress Days.

If you can't visit the museum, you can order two new educational videotapes narrated by Dr. Pasto as he walks through the museum. "Farming in the Old Days: Small Grains" reviews the production, harvesting and threshing of small grains from 6000 B.C. to the 1930s. "Farming in the Old Days: Corn" covers planting methods used by early Native Americans and pioneers and traces progress in corn planting and harvesting through the 1930s.

For more information about the videos, contact Ag Information Services, The Pennsylvania State University, 119 Ag Administration Building, University Park, PA, 16802; phone 814-865-6309; FAX 814-863-9877. Price is $35 for one video, or $50 for both. Allow three weeks for delivery. Make checks payable to Penn State, or include a purchase order.

Penn State's Ag Progress Days features more than 500 acres of educational and commercial exhibits, tours and machinery demonstrations. It is held at the Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs, nine miles southwest of State College on Route 45. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, with extended hours of 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Admission and parking are free.

For more information, call (800) PSU-1010 toll-free from July 13 to August 20 or visit the Ag Progress Days site on the World Wide Web at http://apd.cas.psu.edu.

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EDITORS: For more information, contact Jerome Pasto at 814-865-2541. For more information about Penn State's Ag Progress Days, contact Chuck Gill at 814-863-2713 or Jennifer MacIsaac at 814-865-3636.

Contacts: Kim Dionis kdionis@psu.edu 814-863-2703 814-865-1068 fax