FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Lonny Wunder OR Wayne Ginsberg: (530) 666-9700
Relive the Glory Days of the American Family Farm
History Comes Alive at Once-in-a-Lifetime Antique Farm Machinery Show
“The Best Show on Tracks” June 20-22 in Woodland, Calif.
WOODLAND, Calif. – They say everything old is new again, and that couldn’t be more true for the antique tractors, harvesters and steam engines which will be the “stars” of an upcoming festival in Woodland, California. Billed as “The Best Show on Tracks,” the show presented by the Heidrick Ag History Center will bring together more than 400 lovingly-restored vintage agricultural machines on 150 acres of farmland to celebrate the glory days of the American farm. Visitors will get to walk down memory lane, back to a time before SUVs and cell phones, and watch history come alive through demonstrations of vintage tractors and harvesters – including the grand spectacle of a 27-mule team pulling a completely restored 1905 Holt Harvester. For many folks who come, this will be a chance to relive the past and remember their childhoods down on the farm. Tractor aficionado and Heidrick Ag History Center Board Member Allan Harris, who is one of the organizers of the show, expects to hear plenty of people waxing nostalgic as he walks around the festival.
“You've got people whose families built their farms with these machines – as in, ‘Grandpa's got an old Holt that he drove 50 miles from Stockton and pulled the first stump from the farm with.’ Others may have stories about their uncle Johnny coming home from the war and busting open 40 acres with one of these tractors. And some of them may come to the show thinking, ‘Oh, I want to find a tractor like the one I had as a boy.’ It’s going to be an amazing experience,” Harris said.
The stories make up an unwritten history of American agriculture’s transition from a nation of small family farms powered by the sweat of mules, horses and the farmers themselves to the highly-efficient, machine-driven super farms of today. And that’s a history that many would like to remember.
“There's an old boy who has come to some of the other shows and he can remember the day that the horses were driven off of his farm and the Caterpillar 60s showed up,” said Allan Harris. “They drove the tractors from the railway station to the farm and took the mules away to feed the army. Those kinds of stories are the missing link, because a lot of that stuff was never written down.”
And the lowly tractor, for all its down-in-the-dirt image, has a pretty lofty place in the history of America’s success as a food-producing nation. Crawler-style tractors like the Caterpillar helped American agriculture flourish by allowing the farming of Central California’s soft soils, where wheeled tractors would just sink.
“The history of tractors defines the history and construction of America,” said festival co-creator Tom Madden. “There are so many people in California now. Many of them may not be in agriculture, but if you go a few generations back, you’ll find a connection. They have fathers, grandfathers who built this state by farming the land and producing the food that fed the whole world. This is a look back in time to the roots of so much of pioneer California.”
For additional information on the June 20-22 event, please visit: www.bestshowontracks.org or www.aghistory.org
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
CONTACT: Lonny Wunder, Event Manager: (530) 666-9700 (office); (530) 204-7415 (cell); lwunder@aghistory.org OR Wayne Ginsberg, Publicity: (530) 666-9700 (office); (530) 304-8336 (cell); waynemg6@mac.com
