Calling all tractors!

Agriculture will be in the spotlight at the 9th Annual Margaretville Cauliflower Festival September 29, when a cavalcade of farm tractors will demonstrate the historic and continuing importance to these mechanical beasts of burden.

The parade, featuring tractors old and new, of every make and color, driven by proud current and former farmers, rolls around the festival grounds at 11:30 a.m.  The assembly area will be at the Lauren Davis Farm, East Main Street next to the festival grounds. 

Tractor owners who would like to participate are invited to register by Friday, Sept. 28 by calling 586-3300 or 586-4661. Drivers are asked to be there by 10:30 to get their identification posters and parade positions.  Parking space for trailers will be available.

Lauren Davis will also welcome visitors to a hay-baling demonstration starting at 2:30, when the field next to the village park will be harvested to demonstrate what those big white marshmallows are all about. At 2:45, work will stop to give spectators an opportunity to get an up-close look at the various stages of harvest, the equipment used, and to ask questions about the process.

Gardening workshops will be offered during the day by accomplished farm, garden, and landscape experts Innes Kasanof, Mel Belar and Madalyn Warren. Topics will include important fall flower garden chores (11 a.m.), brightening the autumn and winter garden (1 p.m.), effective deer deterrents (1:30 p.m.) and extending the vegetable growing season through the use of cold frames and successional planting (2 p.m.).

Local products and produce will be for sale at the Cauliflower Festival, including, of course, bushels of cauliflower, once a mainstay of the farm economy here.

Exhibits on the cauliflower industry, and on the remaining barns in the Town of Middletown and environs, will be on display in the History Tent, sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown.

Timber framer Wayne Ford will demonstrate the craft of mortise and tenon joinery with which most early barns were constructed.

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