Kenly — In her first week running the Tobacco Farm Life Museum, Adrienne Dunning has done what her predecessors did — look for money to keep the doors open.

Dunning completed two grant applications and set up her office. Now she wants to move forward with her ideas for the museum, which pays tribute to Eastern North Carolina farm life.

“The main thing ... is to get some educational programming in the one-room schoolhouse,” Dunning said. “It needs an exhibit, it needs some text and labels. The idea is living history and a day in the life of a farm child.”

Children’s groups visit the museum often, and Dunning said the old Barnes School, a gift from Johnston Community College, makes a great backdrop. Dunning said she hopes to find costumes and slate boards to give kids an authentic look at what their great-great-great-grandparents might have experienced in a typical school day.

Dunning said the museum’s board members had already started planning the museum’s 25th anniversary event in June, and she’s jumping into that project, too.

“It’s exciting but at the same time a little overwhelming,” she said. “I’m kind of coming in in the middle of preparations.”

Dunning’s background gives her something of an advantage. She’s visited the museum several times before and grew up with farmer grandparents in the Bertie County town of Aulander.

Dunning, of Greenville, most recently worked in special collections at Joyner Library at East Carolina University. She has degrees in English and history and said she first visited the museum on a trip with her museum-studies class. Museum curator Diana Zeltmann was in that class with her and gave her the heads-up when former director Lynn Wagner announced she was leaving.

Dunning said the staff and board had been very welcoming, and she thinks the museum has a lot of great things going for it, like the annual Heritage Day and anniversary celebrations.

It’s obvious that the community loves the museum, Dunning added. “We had a gentleman stop by this morning who works for the Town of Kenly, and he was a hoot,” she said. “It’s obvious he loves this place. I always enjoy spending time with people like that.”