The 29th Kurgja Farm Day was was kicked off by the legendary bagpipe ensemble Linnutaja, currently in its 46th season.

"As far as we're aware, we were, for quite some time, the only all-woman bagpipe ensemble in Europe," highlighted Linnutaja member Lea Toom. "Maybe that's changed by now, but that's how we used to introduce ourselves in the past."

At Kurgja Farm Day, grain was threshed using a threshing machine, but visitors also had the chance to see even more primitive methods of separating grains, in addition to sheep shearing, horse harnessing and various other farm tasks that, without modern tools, used to require a great deal of time and effort.

"It's unbelievable, because when I do these jobs, I think to myself that this is hard," admitted Aleksander, a visitor from Haapsalu. "But back then, it was even harder!"

Carl Robert Jakobson himself is considered the father of plowing in Estonia, as he was the one to organize the first farmers' plowing competitions 150 years ago to demonstrate the advantages of the moldboard plow over the traditional forked plow. It was the anniversary of this event that was commemorated by a new exhibition housed in the museum's cellar.

"At first, farmers didn't want to adopt the new plow, and Jakobson wanted to show how much better the moldboard plow worked," explained museum educator Lii Sammler. "A record of this event is preserved at the Pärnu Museum, in minutes of the Pärnu Farmers' Society, where it's noted that by the time Jakobson had plowed an entire field, the farmers were only halfway done – and the quality of the work was incomparable."

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