Vigo County Historical Society

Exhibit focuses on farming

For the next few weeks, the museum will host an exhibit focusing on Farm Shows and far-related artifacts.

One special artifact is this Sept. 15, 1956 Prairie Farmer, Indiana Edition. The cover features a full-page cartoon drawing of the many activities to take place at a Farm Show. My favorite section is in the lower right hand corner where an irate woman has an old geezer by the ear as she escorts him out of the Women’s Style Show tent.

The Farm Show took place on the Frances Lane farm in Putnam County, seven miles north of Greencastle.

Thumbing through the magazine, I came across the list of entertainers for Sept. 27 and 28 at this 1956 Farm Show. Do you recognize any of them? They are all National Barn Dance stars, including Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers, Lulu Bell and Scotty, Beaver Valley Sweethearts, Home and Jethro, and other Barn Dance favorites. Other entertainment events included square dance exhibitions and radio station WLS’ Dinnerbell broadcast both days.

Farm Show visitors could watch the national sheep dot trials, see demonstrations by Purdue University, the Soil Conservation Service and other agricultural agencies on tiling/waterway construction, land clearing, timber sawing, crop demonstrations, pond building, crop drying, grain handling, fire fighting on farms, wildlife conservation, and old and new farm machinery.

For the women, there were demonstrations on home furnishing and cooking with small appliances. They could also view the newest room for the home, the family room. The style show featured women from Putnam County modeling clothing constructed from the Prairie Farmer patterns available in many editions of the magazine.

The Farm Show has grown since 1956. The map of the farm used for the events then shows only four tents for the 200 commercial exhibitors, but the 1995 map shows four city blocks of exhibitors’ tents.

This edition of Prairie Farmer was given to the Historical Society by Ceceilia Scott.

Along with this historic treasure of a magazine and other printed artifacts, the exhibit will display farm toys from the museum’s collection. One such toy is a hand-carved and painted wooden horse-drawn wagon driven by a farmer. The wagon bed is filled with small watermelons.

This is a timely and very interesting exhibit. Don’t miss it. During the three days of the Farm Show the Historical Museum is extending its hours--1 to 8 p.m.