Heritage Days Festival at Malabar Farm

 Whoo-Hoo Black Powder!

If I'm not burning some off myself second best is watching others do it!  Today Wyatt and I attended the Ohio Heritage Days Festival held annually at Malabar Farm State Park located in north central Ohio.  Malabar Farm is an interesting place to visit in and of itself being an actual working farm managed by the Ohio State Parks.  Once the home and passion of noted author, conservationist and World War One Veteran Louis Bromfield Malabar Farm comes alive once a year with the sights and sounds of history.

These reenactors are demonstrating colonial era firearms. The long gun would commonly rest on the mantle above the fireplace in a colonist's cabin and be called upon regularly to provide food and in times of war serve equally well.

Heritage Days does not concentrate on any one time period but encompasses all of Ohio's past.  Two civil war artillery units were set up firing off these big bruisers every couple hours through the weekend.  Sorry no pictures of the smoke because I had both my hands busy covering my ears.

 I love old engines of all kinds.  On display was a couple engines from the early 1900's.  I would have loved to take some video of these old machines chugging away but I didn't have a video camera along.  About every 5 seconds the cylinder would fire keeping the flywheel spinning.  The metal hose sticking out and bent around the bottom of the photograph is the exhaust pipe.

This is an amazing engine built in Columbus, Ohio. I enjoy just standing beside these old relics and listening to the mechanical music of early single cylinder internal combustion.

As a tool guy and gadget man I found this display very interesting. What an incredible collection of vintage monkey wrenches dating back to the mid 1800's.

The tools that built a nation.

There was lots of other stuff going on around the farm that I didn't get photographs of.  Plenty of crafts and antiques were up for sale. The big house was open and the main barn was housing a large display of  ancient artifacts found in Ohio -arrowheads, spear points, axes and celts. Thousands of primitive weapons and tools from Ohio's prehistoric past.  Also in attendance was RoadQueen's Horseman's Club operating pony rides for the kids.

Although I've visited the farm on numerous occasions I've never been during the Heritage Days Festival. It was very cool and I look forward to checking it out again next year.