Since the 19th century, the fall harvest and threshing has been an important community event, bringing young and old together to celebrate the end of summer’s labour.
The annual Harvest Home Festival has been a fixture at the Wellington Museum and Archives since the late 70s, and activity programmer Libby Walker says it is still one of their greatest events. Even today the autumn season is one of the busiest for those living in rural communities, and the festival aims to celebrate that.
“It highlights the rural history of Wellington County,” she says. “You’re bringing in the harvest, you’re preparing for winter. From the early settlers up to the modern world, preparing for winter has always been important.”
Guests who stop by the museum on Sept. 21 from 1 to 5pm will be in for a full day of harvest-related activities. There will be a vintage threshing bee with historic working threshing machines and a display of classic tractors – along with blacksmithing, sheep shearing and rope making demonstrations all afternoon. A variety of activity stations will be set up in the barn that highlight pulleys, simple machines and hand tools.
Though the line-up of activities has remained relatively the same, Walker says attendance hasn’t waned over the years.
“We get an interesting mix of people. We get the old-time crew who remember threshing and doing harvest field work … so they really come to reminisce about the days of old; and then we get a lot of young people who are curious and never lived that sort of life who are interested in the way things were done in the past,” she says.
Wellington County’s pioneers were under intense pressure and often worked from dawn until dusk to get as many crops in as possible before the first frost.
“It connects us to each other because it’s so social,” Walker says. “You couldn’t have done these huge jobs alone, every neighbour would help out.”
During the early days of threshing, once the grain had been separated and stored, communities celebrated with dances, music and agricultural fairs.
This tradition of celebrating the harvest still holds true today. However, Walker says the more modern fair attractions often overshadow the time-honoured fixtures such as plowing and threshing and that’s where the festival comes in.
“What distinguishes us from the fall fairs is we’re strictly looking at it in terms of the heritage and traditional activities,” she says. “I’ve had some of the threshers say to me that they love coming here to thresh and show people the process and how the machines work because at the fairs people aren’t interested anymore. At the fairs people want to go on rides and see trucks and derbies, so I think some of it is getting lost.”
That being said, it won’t just be all work and no play. In line with the history of these events, there will be a hoe down in the barn with music from Paul Schultz, and square dancing with the Elora Grand Squares. Puppets Elora will also present a show called Stone Soup for younger threshers at 1:30pm.
Walker hopes participants will learn something about where they’ve come from and how rural society has gotten to the place it’s at today.
“In a couple more generations, if people don’t maintain these machines and carry on the knowledge of how to use them, that information will be lost,” she says.
“We stick with traditional themes as a way of remembering and honouring the past so people can be thoughtful and mindful of where they’ve come from and where we’re going.”
Admission is $5 per person and $12.50 per family. For details, visit www.wellington.ca/museum or call 519-846-0916.
