The annual Threshermen’s Reunion in Pontiac, Michigan, pays tribute to earlier days of farming and keeping the past alive. Highlights include a restored one-room schoolhouse, Case and Ford tractors and equipment, displays of threshing machines and steam engines, and demonstrations of sawmills, threshing and bailing. Future Farmers of America groups play an active role in this reunion.
They weren’t looking for a needle in the haystack in Perrysburg Township, Ohio, but children at the Five Point Steam Threshers’ 44th annual reunion climbed, dove and jumped into one while nearby old-fashioned threshing machines separated wheat grain from the stalk. Leroy Lashaway, Perrysburg Township, Ohio, cleared land and played host to the free event, which featured an assortment of tractors, threshers, and other farm equipment.
Some people were riveted by demonstrations, while others preferred the uniquely prepared old-fashioned food. Steam from one engine ran through a line to heat an enormous vat of bean soup and steam two barrels of corn. One Perrysburg Township resident said he enjoys “getting back to the roots – a bunch of city folks looking at the farmers.”
As for the draw to old machines in a technologically advanced world, visitors may be nostalgic or just interested in the fact that some of the old machines, such as a 1938 tractor, still run.
From stories by Karen Blatter in the Bloomington Pantagraph, Bloomington, Illinois and Lindsey Mergener in the Toledo Blade, Toledo, Ohio.
