Every third Saturday in September, Nelson Pioneer Farm in Oskaloosa hosts a fall festival. The day is full of things representing times of the past: old equipment and techniques, old timey clothes, little buildings full of artifacts... even Abraham Lincoln was present! Josh, the kids and I met with my brother Adam, sister-in-law Jill and their four girls to take the day in in its fullest. Although it was a bit chilly and a little rainy on the get-go, we ended up having a great day!
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Group shot! Baby Izella is sleeping in the car seat, then from left to right is Emma, Abigail, Sarah Rose (yes, she is screaming because she didn't want her picture taken!), Jocelyn and Caleb. |
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The first event after we got there was using the steam engine to thresh the oats they had already harvested. This is the steam engine heating up and blowing off steam! Notice the giant belt stretching across the wheel... I'll mention that again later. |
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Here's the threshing set up. The wagon the fella is standing on is full of oats that have been cut, but not threshed (the oat head knocked off the stalk). Right next to that is the threshing machine. Remember the belt I told you to remember? That belt is stretched across a certain amount of length (of which I know not much about) and is attached to the wheels on the thresher. The steam from the steam engine turns its wheel, in turn spinning the belt which then spins the wheels on the thresher giving it its working power. Josh's Grandpa Elmer remembers harvesting this way; he tells stories of how the steam engine and thresher moved from neighbor to neighbor, each family helping the next. |
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You can see the oats coming out of the thresher. The rest of the stalk was blown into the wagon and they spread it back out onto the field to be baled by an old-timey baler. |
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Caleb apparently thought the steam engine and thresher was going to be too loud. We didn't tell him that the engine would eventually blow its whistle to release extra pressure, but he remembered from playing with Josh's steam engine model at home that it was eventually going to happen. And he was determined to plug his ears, despite our attempts to explain that since the engine was working off all its steam there would be no extra to blow the whistle with. |
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Father teaching Son about soybeans. We only grow corn (since that's what our livestock eats), so Joshua was showing Caleb the "other" crop of Iowa. |
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They soon started up the corn picker. This machine picks the corn by its ears instead of shelling it out by kernel. If you look close, you can see the ears going up the conveyor. |
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This is how everybody used to pick corn "back in the day". There was no such thing as combines then. |
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And here is a group of men looking at an old Allis Chalmers gleaner they used to combine the beans. I get a good chuckle out of this picture because nowadays we always see big groups of guys gathered around great big, new, multi-hundred thousand dollar, ridiculous equipment. And here is a group admiring the simple. Love it! |
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This one makes me smile. |
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Another picture of the action. On the left is the corn picker, and on the right is a harvester for the beans. |
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The bean harvester. Its a far cry from today's equipment, huh? |
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This is a corn planter from way back when. |
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An old, old silo chute. |
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The kids took a turn cranking the corn sheller. |
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A very old, very large thresher. |
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These are hay forks. When Josh was cleaning out his Grandpa's shop, he found a set of forks just like the ones on the right. They were ran along the ceiling of a barn with a set of tracks and used to move hay from place to place. |
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The kids found a tractor that used a crank to start it up, just like the old automobiles. |
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They each took a turn cranking it. I'm sure kids from the past didn't have near as much fun starting up their daddy's tractors as these two did pretending to! |
That was just a taste of the outdoor and equipment entertainment. Now on to the indoors. There are several buildings set up to resemble buildings you would find in the past; a post office, general store and a school house just to name three.
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In one of the buildings was a set of record books. We were astonished to find a financial sheet for the Ku Klux Klan listed in the lumber yard's records. Its amazing how things have changed from then to now. |
On to the parade:
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There's Abraham Lincoln himself. Well, not himself, but you know what I mean. Old Abe walked around the yard all during the event and led the parade through its course. |
More events:
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One of the exhibits set up was a station for kids to make their own rope. At the beginning of the day, the wait was quite long. But towards the latter part of the event, their wasn't even a waiting line! Caleb jumped right in, choosing (of course) yellow and green twine to make his John Deere rope. |
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To make the rope, the kids spun three "threads" of twine until they were tight enough to twists around themselves. |
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Enough cranking and a rope was created! |
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They had two covered wagons on display. This was, in my opinion, the neater of the two. |
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There's Old Abe again! |
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We discovered that if you wait around long enough with cute kids, they'll get offered free leftover cake that was originally sold at lunch! Caleb is like his Daddy.... they never say no to cake!
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These are just a fraction of the pictures we took on our trip. They are a bit random and out of order, but good memories nonetheless!
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