Finnish Museum of Agriculture Sarka

Sarka brings the versatile history of farming to you through moving image, sound, scale models and genuine objects. As an introduction to its collections, the Museum has an impressive scale model, which takes you through the development of the imaginary village of Sarkajoki from the Bronze Age up till the year 2000. The base exhibition The Age of agriculture is a journey through the three-thousand-year history of farming in Finland. Agriculture and its environments have evolved over the millennia, and agriculture itself has created changes in its setting. The age of agriculture is one of labour, cultivated species, domesticated animals, arable fields, burn-cleared swidden plots and pastures; it is a landscape. The age of agriculture has a beginning, but no end. The exhibition has its ending, but the age of agriculture lives on.

Before Machines -exhibition displays the farm work and related tools and implements of the era before agricultural machinery. The oldest items among the over 600 exhibits date from the 18th century. Tools, implements, vessels, containers and other objects introduce visitors to the stages of slash-and-burn and arable farming from ploughing to harvesting. Along with work in the fields, the exhibition presents animal husbandry, work in the farmhouse and the farmyard and the auxiliary livelihoods of hunting, fishing, forestry and various handicrafts.

Additionally there is a separate hall with an exhibition of tractors and other farming machinery. The main building also has three different spaces for exchanging exhibitions and spaces for seminars and feasts.