Basically I guess I would liken this to something like a farm-related exhibit and home-grown/made foods. Blacksmiths working, brooms being made, corn being shucked on old machines, all kinds of old machines and trades being demonstrated. The area covered was pretty big and I had a good time wandering around looking at this and that for about 3 hours. Oh yeah... no admission charge but they did ask you to buy a program for all of $2.00.
Lots of antique tractors and other farm equipment. There were a couple of steam tractors but they weren't running... darn.
I liked walking down this area. Hard to see but that blue canopy place had a white sign that said 'Beef Jerky' and that's where I headed. I bought a few pieces, tried it, and then bought a lot more pieces. This stuff is good! I spent a little time talking to the man and woman at this booth -- if that's what it's called -- and they were very free and open about just how they do it. Evidently the woman is the one who really does it. Other than making the house smell rather 'sweet' for a few days afterwards, nothing to it she said. We'll see :)
This was soooo cool! This is a belt-driven rough saw mill. I have never seen a tree cut into boards and was quite fascinated with this. There were maybe six fellas working it. The person calling out instructions and actually controling the feeder and blade appeared to be perhaps 107 years old and has probably been doing this for 102 of those years. The blade on this thing had to be 4 feet in diameter and nowhere on this maching could I see any kind of safety feature!! My kind of machine!! I got here as they were pretty much finishing with a tree but then they just started on another. To me, these logs were big. You can sort of see them on the left. Maybe 18-24 inches in diameter. Just watching five of them roll the next log up the log ramp to the thing that holds it for cutting was rather fun to watch. Those suckers have to be heavy.
I've never seen a drive belt as long as this one. The main belt continues perhaps another 50 feet, at least, to the lower left in the picture where it's connected to what appeared to be a 100 year old tractor that was driving it. The shorter belt is driving a planer. They cut the board, a guy takes it and runs it through the planer, and...
... then it's over to the stack pile. I'd say it took about 20 minutes to completely cut up a tree into various types of pieces. I just watched, facinated, for about an hour :) While I was there a truck came in carrying more logs so I guess they're going to be at it for the afternoon.
As I was leaving I walked around the other side of the mill and saw this pile of sawdust. This too was so cool. You can sort of see the chain running around the pully in the upper right. This thing runs (I guess) to somewhere under the blade and drags the sawdust away from the mill. So simple but it obviously works like a charm.
Lots of food stands and I had some very good barbeque in addition to the wonderful jerky that I was chewing on the whole time. Actually went back and bought more :) I'm kind of walking on my way to leave and I see this stand. I went over to chat with the folks because I didn't know what a fried oreo is. Turns out it's just what it says... an oreo cookie, fried. The nice lady told me "You know, there ain't nothin' that you can't fry." She asked me if I wanted a sample and handed me one. Sure enough, an oreo cookie surrounded by some kind of batter/dough, fried, and covered in powder sugar. Three weeks of exercise wiped out by one cookie. But, it was rather tasty. The texture was a bit like an orea dunked in milk but this one was just battered and dunked in lard for a while :)
That's it. Had a nice drive home though some little towns I never saw before the drive down, got out the hose to spray the mud off my tires and lower part of the van (yesterday's day-long rain had turned the ruts in the field where they parked cars into pretty deep mush for the most part) and made a note in my calendar for this time next year. A good day out!
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