Want to take a trip back in time? The Country Harvest of Antiques and Crafts will take you back many years. This will be the 11^th Festival held on the spacious grounds of the Birmingham United Methodist Church, a few blocks from the intersection of Routes 113 and 60, on Saturday and Sunday, October 4 and 5.

Come and wander among the corn shocks, pumpkins and flower filled cauldrons and listen to the fiddlers, barber shop singers and caliope. Watch the square dancers and the puppets perform for children of all ages. There will be pumpkin carving and constructing animals out of vegetables. Prizes will be awarded for the best.

The air will be rich with the aroma of good food. Freshly fried Fastnachs, chicken corn rivel soup, apple pan dowdy, hot sandwiches, desserts, pancakes and sausage.

Yoder’s Country Store will have fresh fruits, vegetables, cider, home made pickles, relishes, jams, jellies, farm eggs, homemade mincemeat and old fashioned apple butter cooked in a copper kettle.

Zora’s Yum-yum Bakery will offer farm baked goods, bread, pies, cakes, rolls and cookies. Shoo-fly pie and buttermilk custard pie are two specialties. Home made old fashioned egg noodles, hard to find these days, will be offered too.

Das Wursthuas (sausage house) will have Trail Balogna, Lebanon Balogna, Swiss and Amish Cheeses.

Seventy-six dealers in antiques and crafts will exhibit their wares. They will come from all over Ohio and neighboring states. There will be cornhusk creations, tole painting, leaded glass, wool sculpture plus countless items of antiques in glass, metal and wood.

Fred Watson of Henrietta will show a 104 old wagon that has its original Birmingham stencils. Beautiful Percheron draft horses will pull a large wagon and take visitors down a country lane to the Vermillion River. Old MacDonald’s Animal Petting Farm will be staged in the big red barn for children. Mr. Milks from Green Road in Birmingham, will show his fowl and exotic birds. Children will be able to see sheep sheared, goose down plucked, wool spun and apple butter cooked outside in a copper kettle plus chair caning and lye soap making.

A new attraction will be performances on 1886 high wheel bicycles by Chuck and Wilma Bueckle of Newbury, Ohio. One bicycle is a 1898 Baroness Safety bike ridden by Wilma, another is a 1898 Columbia Chainless ridden by son Chuckie, age 12.

The hours of the festival are 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $2.00 for adults, children under 10 admitted free. All entertainment and demonstrations are included in the admission charges. There is ample free parking.

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Transcribed by Lowell Dunlap