Farm Days at Astabula

The last Saturday in March is the start of our tractor show season.  So this past Saturday, we packed up and headed across the river to see all our friends at Farm Days at Astabula.  

This use to be the old Pendleton show that was started in part by a couple of brothers Norman and Ernest Durham.  We have know them for quite a while and usually camp next to Norman and his wife Elaine when ever we can.  The Durham's are quite knowledgeable about hit and miss engines and both have traveled around the US pulling old iron from the scrap yard into working history again.  We consider them almost family and our kids look for them even before we get out of the truck at every show we go to.

Ashtabula is a charming two-story clapboard plantation house built c. 1825 by Lewis Ladson Gibbes (1771-1828) and his wife, the former Maria Drayton and later owned by their son Lewis Reeves Gibbs, the famous SC naturalist. The house was expanded to 10 rooms by later owners and the farmland expanded to over 1,000 acres. The orginal 2-story brick building on the site dates to before 1790 and was the site of a traveler's tavern prior to the building of the main house. This building was later attached to the main house with a breezway and was used as the plantation kitchen, and other rooms are interpreted as servant's quarters and a school room. Ashtabula is a house museum situated on ten acres of open ground with its colonial period brick dependency and well house. The house was restored by the Pendleton Historic Foundation and furnished with antebellum antiques and family artifacts.

The show is set up under in the grove of oak trees with the house in the back ground.  It's really neat to hear all the engines popping and grinding under the trees.  It makes you feel as if you are on a working plantation in the 1880s.  There was an 1883 working cotton gin, blacksmith demos, and all types of toys from the 1800s for kids (and adults alike) to learn how to play.

Here are some of the sites we saw and were apart of at the Farm Days at Ashtabula...

First thing Hamp did was get on Mr. Norman's wagon right between two girls!

This is a corn shucker.  You put in dried corn and this machine will take the shucks from the cob.

Another view of the corn shucker.

Hubby talking with the celebrity at the show, Lyn Ellis.  Lyn was on American Pickers.  I had to leave...I didn't have my boots on.  The conversation was "getting pretty deep." 

This is an antique hay bailer that Sam is filling.  Later on, Knox joined Sam as they bailed some more bails.  These two boys are always finding something to do at every show we go to. 

Ernest Durham (on left with black hat) is showing his latest engine he has rebuilt.  It belongs to  the man on the left, Dean Hunter.

Some of the kids at the show were trying to make some money. They were selling Corn Dogs...ears of corn with faces put on them with a string tied around them.  Sam was handling marketing.

Hamp worked all day at trying to fill up that water bucket.

This is a very rare, single cab steel hauler by International.  To the left you can see the engine that runs the corn shucker.

All day Hamp worked at grinding corn for Ms. Linda.  At the end of the day, I caught Hamp and his Daddy racing to empty the corn grinder.  It was a great end to a great day!