Ollie Goes to Pville

We have been on the road off and on for the past ten days covering over 1000 miles. We carried Ollie to Pinckneyville, Illinois Friday the 16th of August. We took the camper and left it at the fairgrounds at Duquoin. We decided to just park it and leave it for when we came back to the fair the next week. We got up early and loaded Ollie and headed north. Got to the campground and got the camper set up in our favorite spot and then headed to Pville to the Threshermans show. This is an annual show they have and it is quite a big deal. We took Ollie there in 2011 when they were featuring Oliver tractors. It is so nice to have an exhibit that is also a way to get around the show. They have a big flea market with all kinds of old wonderful treasures. You can look and look and still never see it all. I also love this show, because they have a lot of horses and mules doing different things. Their big thing and I do mean big thing is all the giant steam engines. There are also a lot of demonstrations like sawmills run by old tractors or steam engines and hay baling, plowing threshing, etc. This year they had a new thing that I really enjoyed watching-they had timed obstacle courses using the horses and mules. We spent 2 days at the show and here are some pics I took while there.

It didn't take us long to find some Oliver tractors. The 2 smaller ones in this pic were home made by a fellow Oliver enthusiast from Claremont, Illinois. He had an 1850 and 1950. Tommy was very impressed with them and spent a lot of time bending his ear about how he made them. Now he wants to find a cub cadet lawn mower and make one of his own.

We like it that there are so many Oliver tractors at the shows in Illinois. Around here, there are never many and sometimes Tommy is the only one there with an Oliver.

 Of course my eyes are drawn to the horses and mules. There are always a bunch of horse and mule drawn wagons riding around the grounds plus using them for different kinds of field work.

This was one of my favorite things I saw at the flea market. A fellow and his wife make these benches. They are made using an old iron bed frame and then his wife paints and decorates them in certain themes. This Oliver one was so pretty. He has some tractor signs he makes for wall hangings sitting on each end. Of course, I was already pinning it in my mind for Tommy to make sometime :) It would look so grand on our front porch.

                                        Here's an old Farmall on steel.

They were featuring Minneapolis Moline tractors this year. There were some real sharp ones there. I like how colorful and happy looking the Molines are. They remind me so much of sunflowers.

These are some of the giant steam engines. I thought this little girl standing next to the wheel of one was so cute and kind of showed how monstrous these are.

This was my favorite pair of mules. This was when they were hooking them to a sled with weights on it to see how much they could pull. This is not my favorite thing to watch. It seems like it is so hard on them when the weights get heavier. I can't believe how strong their harness must be to withstand the pulling.

This was the event that I loved the most. It was a timed event for pairs of horses or mules hooked to a very long pole. They had to weave in between about 12 cones spread out in a line and then turn and weave back through them. If the pole touched a cone or knocked it over, they had time added. Some of these men seemed to drive the teams through the cones effortless although I know it took a lot of experience and knowledge of their animals to get this done. There was one fellow who was doing so well until he got back halfway and all the steam engines blew their whistles(they do this at noon everyday), and the mules got so flustered they messed up. They gave him another run, but by then the mules were not able to concentrate. The bigger horses like the ones above, took so much room to get in between the cones. The winning time was a little over 3 minutes and was won with a team of mules.

 As you can see the mules and horses have my heart, not the tractors. I get goose pimples watching a pair of heavy draft horses move so lightly on their feet. They  definitely are Gentle Giants. One of the things that concerned me was that most of the people working the horses and mules were older folks. I sure would hate to see this part of history fade away.

This is only a fraction of the things we saw at Pville. I sure did enjoy myself and hope to go back again sometime.