Goessel museum to host cooper demonstration Saturday, Oct. 6

Written by Hillsboro Free Press Tuesday, 25 September 2012 14:26

Jim Gaster will demonstrate his skills as a cooper at the Mennonite Heritage & Agricul­tural Museum in Goessel Oct. 6 as part of the community’s annual Harvest Festival.

A cooper whose fully functional wooden buckets and related items have earned him a national reputation will demonstrate his craft from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6, at the Mennonite Heritage & Agricul­tural Museum in Goessel.

Jim Gaster is a full-time cooper who specializes in “white coopering,” a branch of cooperage that features wooden buckets, butter churns and other household items. He lives near Indianola, Neb., and calls his business Beaver Buckets.

Gaster’s appearance at the museum is part of the Goessel Harvest Festival activities.

Children may assist Gaster in making a keg at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. He will demonstrate the barrel-charring process at 3 p.m.

Gaster’s work has been praised for its quality, personality and historical integrity. His clients include The Smithsonian Institutions, the White House Visitors Center, Disneyland, Ordsall Hall Museum in Salford, England, and Hutchinson House Museum in Peterborough, Ont.

His work has appeared in several movies, including “The Alamo,” “Seabiscuit,” “The Legend of Zorro,” and “The Assassination of Jesse James.”

Other activities offered by the museum Oct. 6 are a Museum Scavenger Hunt and “Barking Up Your Family Tree,” an opportunity for parents and grandparents to help their children fill in a family tree form.

Mennonite Heritage & Agricultural Museum, located at 200 N. Poplar, is an eight-building complex dedicated to telling the story of Russian Mennonite immigrants who settled in the Goessel area in the mid-1870s, and of agricultural development in the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s. The museum is offering free admission Oct. 6.