The 33rd annual Antique Tractor Show returns to Oak Park in Greenfield this weekend.
The event features displays and demonstrations of antique farm machinery, cars, and tools, tractor games, kids’ activities, live music and food, raffles, and a flea market.
The Greenfield Harness and Drawbar Club hosts the event in conjunction with the Oak Park Committee.
“Somebody brings something new every year,” said Mel Rossi, the president of the Greenfield Harness and Drawbar Club.
He said this is the club’s annual show, and its content depends on who decides to come out.
Most equipment comes from area residents, although he said,event fliers have been posted for a hundred-mile radius.
“[There are] some real old tractors, and some, even though they’re old, that are used every day,” he said.
Exhibitors who bring running tractors can ride them in the event’s tractor parade.
Tractor games are open-entry and begin on Saturday at noon.
In one, participants must navigate their tractor through an obstacle course while balancing an egg on a spoon. In another event, operators must drive the course with paper bags over their head.
Rossi said there will also be a maypole race, where drivers must circle a maypole without their rope touching the ground, and a slow race, “where the last one to cross the finish line wins,” he said.
There will be a pedal-tractor pull for children.
Rossi said the weekend will also feature a diverse selection of old-fashioned tools. He’ll be bringing hand-cranked corn grinders, antique corn choppers, a tractor-run 24-inch two-blade planer and saw rig, and an old-fashioned grind stone, with hay cutting knives for sharpening demonstrations, he said.
“We go as far back as the late 1800s with this stuff,” he said, and that appliances like old fashioned washing machines and spinning wheels will be on display as well.
“We’re dedicated to saving any kind of old farm equipment before it gets destroyed or buried,” he said. “We restore a lot of old stuff that was destined for junkyards.”
Jane Rossi, Mel’s wife, is the the secretary-treasurer of the Harness and Drawbar club. She said the club is dedicated to the restoration and preservation of antique implements, and their antiquated name itself exemplifies that: before tractors, people used harnesses and drawbars for horse-drawn wagons and log skidder. Although a team of horses and some horse-drawn equipment will be on display, the show’s collection extends to equipment made in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she said.
Visitors can see an old potbelly stove in the park’s old train station building, and that there will be a steam boiler running a couple steam engines on site.
A couple of local blacksmiths will be setting up a forge to make railroad spikes and other useful tools.
The ConVal Robotics Club will be on site to demonstrate a “fancy little buggy” they made in their shop class, that runs with pushbutton controls.
“We have excellent food, you name it, we have it. Breakfast in the morning, food all day,” Mel Rossi said.
Jarvis Adams and the Boogie Men Band will be performing live throughout the event.
Admission is free, and the event runs from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m on Saturday and Sunday.
The club is still accepting participants for the yard sale, flea market, and farmers market area (no vendor fees), animal exhibits (must bring your own fencing/pen), tractors and farm equipment for exhibit.
Mel Rossi said that members of the Harness and Drawbar Club will be wearing club shirts and nametags, and will be available to answer questions and take new registrations.
He said that most of the membership is Greenfield-based, and the club conducts outreach to area owners of farm equipment who might be interested in joining.
“You don’t need to own anything old yourself to join,” he said.
It’s $10 a year to join the club, which meets on the first Thursday of every month from April until the show.
Interested exhibitors, vendors, and potential members should contact Mel Rossi at 547-3351 or Peter Wells at 924-8417.