At the entrance of the room the instruments used by the cobbler are exhibited along with some shoes. People used to walk barefoot, with cloth slippers, or handmade wooden clogs. The women were the ones who sewed cloth slippers. They sewed them manually and quilted the soles with tight stitches and great skillfulness. The soles were made by piling pieces of old sheets until they were two or more centimetres thick, sewing them with hemp twine, and then repeatedly hitting them with a hammer. To the soles they applied a fustian upper, upholstered with cotton or linen cloth, or a black velvet upper, upholstered with new white cloth: the last slippers were used on feast days.

Clogs were carved by the men. On the floor there are some benches equipped with a foot-activated vise system. Once the carpenter had blocked the piece of wood in the vise, he sat on the bench and carved it until the clog was made. Almost all the clogs were worn with thick woollen socks, as their upper part was not entirely covered with a leather upper, but only with a stripe which was a few centimetres large and fastened to the wooden edges. The only ones to be made of leather were for the winter.

In winter the inhabitants of the valley had to wear clogs with soles that were equipped with strong studs to avoid slipping on ice. In more recent times, the first grapnels were introduced and fastened to the soles. Studded clogs and grapnels could also be used while mowing on steep slopes.

The cobbler’s tools were also the chisel, the plane, and the mould to shape the uppers. The exhibition also shows a unique tool that consisted of a metal anvil in the shape of an upturned foot fastened to a large piece of log, which allowed the cobbler to fasten the studs to the sole.

Wool processing was an important activity in the Upper Torre Valley until 1976, the year of the earthquake. Towards the half of the 19th century, pastoralism was neglected to make new space for cattle rearing. The radical change in the techniques employed in the production of milk was not followed, for practical reasons, by an abandonment of wool processing. Each family kept rearing some sheep to get wool. The material reality of this activity is preserved in the museum.

On one panel we find the scissors which were used to shear the sheep. Their shape is archaic, as they consist only in a curved piece of metal. The metal is flatter at both ends, thus forming two blades with a large base and a flattened vertex.

The wool that was obtained was then combed and carded with a thistle or teasel, which consisted of two small boards with a series of thin nails attached to one side. One of the boards was fastened to a wooden chest on the side of the bench where people sat.

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The wool was spun with a distaff spindle or with the more sophisticated method of the spinning wheel. In the museum some spindles are displayed on the panels and various spinning wheels are placed in the middle of the room. The spinning wheels fall into two categories depending on their type: those with a horizontal and those with a vertical loom. Another variable was the pulley, which could be full or with spokes. The spinning wheel was often used to unite two threads so that the wool could become stronger and heftier.

A reel was used to make the skein: two such tools are exhibited on the shelf under the panel. The simplest one consists of a curved pine branch supporting the arms that hold the skein.

The other example is more sophisticated and it consists of a vertical support holding a horizontal board with four spokes connected to four wooden crossbeams. The tool was activated with a wooden crank.

This area also contains a wooden tool which was used to break or crush linen stalks to separate the wooden part from the fibre.

Procuring the fodder was one of the most important activities for the inhabitants of the valley and was considered the fulcrum of the valley’s economic structure. The habit of permanently keeping the livestock in cowsheds meant that the people needed to constantly transport the fodder directly to the cowshed or to the hayloft.

The meadows that could be mown were not communal property. Each family possessed different meadows, but the parcels were usually distant and not large. The meadows surrounding the villages were mown in May. The meadows were not sown with fodder plants, but they were fertilised. This operation consisted in three cuts: the first in May, the second in the middle of the Summer, and the last in the first days of November. On the mountains the mowing happened only once, in July or August.

The mowing of the senožet, the meadow that needed mowing, was carried out by the whole family, children and elderly included.

The grass sickle could reach 28 cm in length and was used for steep pieces of land.

The hay sickle consisted of a stick, handles, and a blade.

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The people mowing the meadows always needed to bring the tools for sharpening the blade and usually had a container for the whetstone hung to their belt. The museum shows a lot of examples of whetstones and their containers. The most remarkable are those with two spikes on the bottom, which allowed the object to be fixed to the ground. The whetstones consisted of a wooden handle and a stone that was made of flinty limestone and fastened with wire. The stone could also be used without the handle.

To sharpen the blade of the sickle, and more precisely to level out the cuts and the rough spots, an anvil and a hammer were used. The anvil was similar to a big nail with an enlarged head, symmetrically blunted on the sides in order to form a rounded edge. The other edge was pointed and was stuck into the ground.

The Summer heat did not allow to mow after eleven in the morning. During the pause, the space was arranged for some small ricks that were prepared towards the evening to protect the hay from the humidity of the night. On the next day, the children spreaded the ricks’ hay on the meadow. During the day, the mown grass was turned to let it dry completely.

For this they used the rakes. To shape the rakes’ prongs the inhabitants of the valley used a cylindrical wooden object on which a metal clamp with a hole with sharpen edges was placed. A wooden stick was placed on the hole’s rim and beaten with a wooden hammer.

In the evening the hay was carried to the village. If the meadows were distant, three or four ricks were made.

The hay could be transported in different ways. Usually it was carried on the shoulders in the zbrincija, which was similar to a pack basket, but more capacious.

Other tools from the agricultural world which are exhibited in the museums are the leaf rakes with their strong iron toothed bar and some tools that were used to shuck corn.

Among the things on display, there are objects that were put under the shoes, whose base was obtained from a piece of wood in the shape and with the dimensions of a paper leaf: in the middle part, a cavity for the foot was carved, along with a rim to contain it. These objects were tied to the foot with a leather or woven belt. They were used in the fields when covering the holes for sowing with soil.

Another thing that can be seen is a mallet that was used by the children to beat, adjust, and finish the tilling of clumped soil, in order to make it suitable for sowing.

On the floor there are some sled runners, as sleds were used to transport manure or hay on the snow. They were dragged manually with the help of some curved branches that were placed on their frameworks.

The multimedia installation presents interesting videos regarding:

• the village of Micottis before the earthquake,
• the old Micottis mill,
• the making of a rick,
• the wool spinning process explained by Albino Micottis,
• Albino Micottis making a pack basket.