Huffing and chugging at CAMA

KENT — The three-day Fall Festival of the Connecticut Antique Machinery Association, Sept. 28 to 30, in Kent was blessed with autumn’s finest weather — and crowds that exceeded all estimates. 

The parked cars in the fields below stretched on seemingly endlessly. Happily, there were two tractors with wagons shuttling visitors back and forth from cars to fair. 

The Fall Festival really is two shows in one: first, there is the machinery: tractors of every make and vintage, farm equipment for every task, from harvesting potatoes to shucking  and grinding corn, to sawing wood to name a few. 

The background music for the festival was the constant huffing and chugging of one-lung engines and the puffing of steam. 

Much tinkering and fine-tuning by the owners kept everything running smoothly. 

The other “show” is a staggering, acres-wide “tag sale,” with vendors spreading out their goods old and new, used and very used. 

Everyone was walking around with the notion of finding something they’d been seeking for years. If it wasn’t there last weekend, it probably never existed. From junk to jewels, dressed in an elegant overcoat of rust or immaculately polished, there was something for everyone at what is possibly “The Greatest (Used)Show on Earth.”

The operating sawmill is always a popular display, powered by a 1912 Case Tractor. Likewise, Shannon Strong’s lumberjack demonstration provided entertainment for adults and children.

There was a lot of walking, a lot of oohing and aahing, and a lot to see. While the Fall Festival is the association’s biggest event of the year, there is a similar event held each year in spring. During the early-season event, the historic machines in the association’s barns are “powered up” for the season. In autumn, the machines are powered down after the fall festival and put to bed for the winter.