This weekend just gone I was at a steam working weekend, which is improving year on year. In fact it was commented a number of times yesterday that the amount of people about was reminiscent of a proper rally.
The variety, quantity and quality of exhibits truly is impressive:
Pair of Fowler steam ploughs, with a 6 furrow anti-balance plough.
Many vintage tractors ploughing.
Stone crushing by steam.
Road making / rolling by steam roller.
Rack Saw Bench – steam driven.
Horizontal Saw Bench – steam driven.
Small saw bench – tractor driven.
Thrashing Machine and Baler – steam driven.
Thrashing Machine and Elevato – not actually working.
Chaff cutter – not actually working.
Display of stationary engines.
A total of 7 heavy horses, ploughing and pulling carts, plus a team of 4 pulling a steam fire engine.
Variety of other steam vehicles.
Manual Cider Press.
I can’t claim to have seen all that was there, but it was noticeable how interested a lot of children were when first noticing a machine in operation.
Friday
Friday I helped to clean one of the engines that was to be roaded there, as well as running around in the car when people needing dropping places due to delivering exhibits to the field.
Saturday
Saturday I commenced with the idea of being a supervisor on the stone crushing, although did end up on occasion take my turn, generally carrying out light duties. I also tried to ensure the ropes around the area were maintained, as with children leaning on / swinging against the rope a post or two would occasionally come loose.
We (the ‘committee’ that had arisen to organise the crushing) elected to do slightly over half on the Saturday so as not to have too much to do on the Sunday in case the weather became inclement, and also to give us time to pack up.
We had a slow start, as the Field Marshall we had planned to run it with until the Garrett had steam ran far too fast for the crusher. Once the Garrett was ready progress was probably not as efficient as could have been down to a plethora of volunteers and no plan of how to transport the crushed stone away. We found the owners of a couple of Bonsar 3 wheel trucks who were only too willing to transport the stone to the entrance of the field for the rollers to roll in.
After lunch though we got into a decent rhythm, once we were down to an optimum amount of people and had two vehicles running taking away the stone. The crusher, and therefore the engine, did not really work very hard as most of the material we were crushing was building waste, so a mixture of concrete and brick.
Sunday
Sunday I again did a little stone crushing, but also in the morning became second man on the coal delivering, after we had gone and collected another tonne.
When I caught up with the stone crushers it was noticeable that the skip which the ‘raw material’ came in had a lot of small dusty stone in it. We spent longer getting bucket loads of small stone out, that mostly did not need crushing, as we did passing out decent sized lumps for crushing. A side effect of this was it was very dusty for both eyes and nose – my throat today is sore which I attribute to the amount of dust I must have breathed on over the weekend.
By 2 o’clock though we had finished all of the stone we had been suppliedwith, and cleaned the area of any unwanted stone.
Weather
The weather over the weekend was, considering the time of year, good in general, with the only rain being overnight. The problem with this was the high expectations – last year the weather for this event was unseasonably hot, as was last weekend, so our perceptions were probably very high in advance.
Food
One truly remarkable element of this event is that the exhibitors are provided with lunch on both days supplied by the some of the wives of the families involved. The first year of this event it was an impressive sight, but as the show has got bigger every year since the amount of food provided is astounding, and to such a wonderful standard. It really would be worthy of a professional caterer in a proper venue, provided in a tent in a field. I would guess there must be something like 150 – 200 people fed. I for one would like to thank those responsible for that, something that typifies the friendly atmosphere of this event.
Going Forward
So this truly marks the end of another season. Next weekend is a trip to Cheffins auction before going on to Leicester to meet up with some friends for the night, before the first Dinner & Dance of the winter in about a month. With the Road Run at Christmas to look forward to, and at least one more Dinner & Dance (in March), the majority of occurrences going forward will probably be maintenance, although I’ve not had any conversations about this yet.
Tags: baler, bench, chaff, cider, coal, crushing, cutter, elevator, Garrett, machine, Ploughing, press, saw, stone, thrashing, working
