Experience frontier life at Rendezvous with Central Iowa Free Skinners

Jasper County’s Ashton Wildwood Park will travel back in time May 12-14 for a Rendezvous with the Central Iowa Free Skinners.

The event, which is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 13 and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 14, will provide attendees with a glimpse into what life was like in the early 1800s on the frontier.

“The entire open circle area at the park will be full of craftsmen’s tents, a blacksmith shop and many more fun activities that families can watch or participate in,” said Jasper County Conservation Naturalist Katie Cantu.

The Central Iowa Free Skinners, who were previously known as the Chichaqua Free Skinners, are hosting the Rendezvous for a third straight year at Ashton. May 12 is “School Day” and will be reserved for students in central Iowa.

Rachel Wilson is a club member, and she coordinated the School Day. The Free Skinners are expecting more than 100 students to participate at the Rendezvous, she said.

Students will be in small groups and rotate between different sessions at the event.

“They’re constantly seeing different things, and then they do a couple larger group activities,” Wilson said. “There will be, for example, dutch-oven cooking. There might be 30 kids in that group, and they each get to see how they cook cobbler in the dutch oven, and then they each get a little taste of it.”

The Rendezvous will then open to the public over the weekend. There will be primitive bow shoots, tomahawk and knife throws, cooking contests, kids games and more. A fundraiser auction will be held at 2:30 p.m. on May 13.

The group that organizes the event is small, but the Free Skinners are expecting more than 30 camps at this year’s Rendezvous, Wilson said. Anyone who wishes to camp with the club must be “period correct.” That is, campers should bring white canvas tents and dress appropriately to the time period of the 1800s.

Set up for the camps will be on May 10. There is a camp fee of $25.

Visitors who are stopping by over the weekend are welcome to come dressed in modern attire or however they like, but the Free Skinners will be going all out. Wilson said that the club members will be living the frontier lifestyle over the weekend, and attendees will notice.

“We sleep there all weekend. The tents that they see — those are our homes for the weekend,” Wilson said. “When they look inside, they’ll see beds and they’ll see mugs and pitchers and bowls. Those are the things we use for the whole weekend. We don’t get to use a microwave. We prepare food on the fire.”

For more information email the Central Iowa Free Skinners at rkwilson@yahoo.com or call 515-305-0439.

Contact Justin Jagler at 641-792-3121 ext 6532 or jjagler@newtondailynews.com