Discover Excitement at the Wallachian Museum’s Harvest Festival

The Wallachian Open Air Museum is gearing up for a fantastic summer event known as the traditional folk Harvest Festival! This fun celebration is returning to the Wallachian Heritage area after an eight-year break, and it kicks off on Saturday 23 August 2025. The museum area will be open starting at 9:00 am, and the main events of the harvest festival will begin after 2 pm.

During the day, you can look forward to demonstrations of traditional rural crafts. There will be activities like knitting scarves, crafting straw decorations and harvest wreaths—symbols of gratitude and the harvest. Additionally, you might see birch brooms and baskets made from willow, along with small decorative items created from straw. At the homestead of a farmer from Nový Hrozenkov, you will be able to smell the delicious aroma of festive cakes, along with the sweet millet porridge from the Matoch homestead, which used to be a source of energy for hard-working peasants after long days in the fields.

At 2:00 pm, there will be a mowing demonstration and ceremonial milking happening in the field under the terrace, celebrating the final mowing and giving thanks for the harvest. One hour afterward at 3:00 pm, there will be a thanksgiving devotion at the chapel from Wallachian Bystřice. And then at 3:30 pm, the Matoch Homestead Courtyard from Velké Karlovice will come alive with the harvest festival, filled with customs, songs, and dances.

Harvest – a time of abundance and merriment

The harvest experience from times past is now just a fond memory for many of us. Just fifty years ago, people remembered the harvest by using sickles and scythes. At that time, there were still women who shared tales of how, in some mountain farms, they would still prefer to cut the grains using this old-fashioned tool, believing that using a scythe would “beat the grain in the field.” Large landowners would hire up to twenty harvesters to help them.

No matter if they were harvesters or people using rakes, each one of them needed to be served a hearty meal during their labor to keep their strength up, maintain good spirits, avoid arguments with the housekeeper, and—most importantly—to ensure that they would return for the next harvest next year. During this busy time, the housewives made sure they prepared an abundance of everything. This allowed the children to sing amusing songs while the work was being done.