TURBOTVILLE -- It isn't just one day and they go back to their video games.

Youths who make paper, bricks, barrels, rope and yarn, write like scribes of old and can churn butter -- as they demonstrated at Warrior Run-Fort Freeland Heritage Days on Saturday and Sunday -- work on their "trades" throughout the year.

"I'm an outdoor kid," said Ben Morris, 15, of Danville, as he stood atop a log propped about 8 feet high on giant sawhorses.

He and his friend Chris Adams, 17, of Watsontown, on the ground, manned opposite ends of an authentic 1790 pit saw, a 5-foot long blade with handles on each end. "It would take two men two days to saw two logs," Morris explained.

That's how they made lumber to build with.

It's pretty labor-intensive, he admitted, but he finds video games boring.

So, too, must many of the other youngsters on hand for the two-day festival crafts, demonstrations, food, lectures and re-enactments.

Ten-year-old Dave Witmer knows so much about old-fashioned paper-making he sounded like a college professor.

"In 1850, they didn't have wood fibers, they had cotton," he said. "What they would do is, after their clothes were too old to use, they would sell them to a ragman. The ragman would sell them to a papermaker.

Beaten to a pulp

"The papermaker would soak the clothes for three or four weeks until the fibers were very loose. Then they would hire someone about 15 to beat it to a pulp.

"Then they would scoop it up out of the water in a wire screen. The contents of the screen would be dumped on a piece of felt, another piece of felt put over it, and then pressed."

The resulting paper was thick, with a texture something like that of a paper towel. It was called dekkel.

Wyatt Kirkendall, 12, would rather be woodworking than working a Playstation.