Avery McClelland got soapy while washing clothes by hand. She churned butter from cream, feed corn to farm animals, and planted an onion in the garden at Rentschler Farm.

The 7-year-old was one of the second-graders in Carrie Houghton’s class from Pleasant Ridge Elementary School who experienced first-hand what it might have been like to grow up on a farm in the 1930s.

She and her classmates are among approximately 350 second-graders from three Saline elementary schools to visit Rentschler Farm in Saline this spring, said Agnes Dikeman of the Saline Area Historical Society.

The historical society maintains the family farm as a living museum just outside downtown on Michigan Avenue.

Four generations of Rentschlers lived on the farm between 1901 and 1998, when the buildings and 4 acres were purchased by the City of Saline.

The children got a chance to perform farm chores such as mowing the grass with a non-electric push mower, planting vegetables, feeding the animals and churning butter — the same sorts of chores that children in the 1930s would have done before and after school.

Houghton said that in social studies class, the students compare the past and present.

“They’ve been to the one-room school house and here. It’s a day in the life after a year-long study of history. This brings it to life for them,” Houghton said.

Three volunteer interpreters recently took small groups of children through the farm property and farmhouse, explaining what life was like in that era, from listening to the “Lone Ranger” on the radio to party-line telephones.

The students learned that “children were to be seen and not heard” while company was in the home, and the parlor was a special place for entertaining visitors — not for everyday use.

“It’s great to maintain this — a small-town, agricultural-based community,” said Heidi McClelland, a mom on the trip who had brought her daughter, Avery, to the farm previously.

“We come to Harvest on the Farm in the fall,” she said.

The farmhouse, built in 1906, had no bathroom, and the children learned the family used an outhouse.

“The kids did the garden work — the planting and weeding — when they came home from school,” said Linda Greb, a historical society member, who played Mrs. Rentschler for the day.

Kathy Fortener, an intern from the Historic Preservation Program at Eastern Michigan University, was also served as an interpreter at the farm. She explained that the big bell on the farm was only rung if something important was going on.

“There were no cell phones back then,” she said.

After seeing all the jobs children had on the farm, Olivia Odum, 7, said, “Wow, it was a lot of hard work.”

Dean Greb, the president of the historical society, played Mr. Rentschler, and told the children that all the vegetables grown on the farm were donated to the Washtenaw County-based Food Gatherers program to feed the hungry.

The farm, located at 1265 E. Michigan Ave., is open on Saturdays through September from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and admission is free.

Lisa Allmendinger is a regional reporter for AnnArbor.com. She can be reached at lisaallmendinger@annarbor.com. For more Saline stories, visit our Saline page.