Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Antique Flea Market Farm Toy Show

On Saturday the Jasper County Fairgrounds hosted the Antique Flea Market Farm Toy Show. I decided to check it out this year and found it was bigger than I expected it to be. There were exhibits in the commercial building.
The building that hosts the 4-H projects during fair week was also full.
If you wanted to buy old toy tractors, this was the place to be. I think we had a few of these models when my kids were small. Now they are worth ten or fifteen dollars.
The community building where wedding receptions are sometimes held was also full of exhibitors. One exhibitor filled the east wall with toy tractors. There are buckets of them under the tables.
At the south entrance to this building was a large display of Diane's Handwoven Baskets. I stopped and asked her who made the baskets. (All baskets are handmade. Most are handmade in poor countries where labor is cheap.) She said that she made them and had been selling them for six years. Her sign said she was from Demotte.
I was impressed with the large number of baskets and the variety. She said that there were books showing how to make various designs, but she often starts with one design and along the way switches to doing something else.
Basket making is a wonderful skill that was developed many thousands of years ago. If you are a basket collector, you might check her out.
Outside there was some entertainment and several food booths, some of which I remembered from the county fair. For the kids there were a couple of the very popular air-pressurized bouncy inflatables.
There was also a kiddie tractor pull in progress, with a bunch of trophies to be won.

I took several video clips of little kids in the contest. Here is what it looked like.
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In the background you can hear the music of a group performing on the little stage next to the commercial tent. They sounded pretty good, but it was early in the morning and there was not much of a crowd. I wonder how many other groups performed during the event.
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I hope that next year this event and the Little Cousin Jasper Festival do not coincide. We are not a big enough town to have both events at the same time.

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