Lughnasa                                                                   Honey Moon

The Nowthen Threshing Show.  I’ve seen the notices for this event since we moved up here 20 years ago, but never got around to going.  This year Kate and I drove over.  It’s only a few miles away.  I imagined a few steam driven machines, maybe some old tractors.  Boy was I off.  This event had acres of cars parked east of a huge exhibit area with a track for the Parade of Power that ran around a circular railroad track for the small gauge Nowthen Railroad.  On the south side of the tracks sat food trucks with “walking tacos” and “BLT tacos.”  Behind them, further south, was a large flea market.  I remarked to Kate that it would have been interesting in Ecuador, here not so much.

On the north side of the tracks was a small depot for the Nowthen Railroad and behind it, across the track for the Parade of Power (any older farm machinery that moved on its own) was a blacksmith’s shop with three forges and older men with younger apprentices working metal.  This building also had a woman spinning thread.  A craft building had hooked rugs, quilts, knick-knacks and a bit of pottery.

There was a letterpress building with an old Heidelberg letterpress, a small press version of the giant Heidelberg that printed the Alexandria Times-Tribune in my youth.  Behind the press was a building labeled Steam Machines.  In it were several steam pumps, all working, a large piston driven wheel that worked a generator in a long ago electricity generating plant and a crowded table about 10 feet long full of miniature steam engines powering miniature machines.

As Kate and I wandered among the buildings, the Parade of Power was underway on the track which ran between two rows of buildings.  The announcer would give the name of the equipment, its age and the owner who had restored it and, probably, drove it.  I say probably because as you can see in this photo one of the traditions of farm life was underway on this old tractor, a young girl drives it.

My favorite exhibit was the old saw mill which had this huge mobile engine driving it. The tree trunks passed through the saw shown here.  This was dangerous work, as you can see by the open saw blade, but equally dangerous were the power belts that connected the steam engines to the threshers, sawmills, silage grinders, or hay balers.

These, too, are my people.  Political radicals, docents, environmentalists, scholars, poets and writers, and farm folk are the milieus where I feel comfortable.  As we left the parking lot later in the day, a man signaled I could come into the exit lane with the familiar flick of the right index finger above the steering wheel.  I signaled thanks the same way.

Of course, these kind of things have to interest you, but if they do, every third week of August tiny Nowthen becomes a happening place for motorheads, old farmers and folks curious about how things used to be done.