Wade Murray is nostalgic by nature. That makes him ideal to lead an organization like the Warren County Old Threshers Association.The Threshers’ mission is to help preserve America’s fast-fading American agricultural heritage. It does this by collecting, preserving, restoring and showing old tools, implements and machinery used by past generations of Central Missouri farmers.“Someone like me, under 30 years old, probably never worked with these tools, so getting to use them makes you appreciate what you have today,” Murray said.Murray and his organization hosted their 36th annual Farm Heritage Day festival last weekend. They had fine weather and the crowds came out in large numbers to eat barbecue, try their luck in the gun raffle, watch demonstrations by local chain saw carvers, belly up for the watermelon eating contest, or, for the first time, participate in the adult pedal tractor pull. And, of course, plenty of threshing.Murray says one of the best things about Farm Heritage Days is how it not only brings the community together, but it helps to build community.“You get a chance to talk with some of the older people who worked with the tools when they were younger,” he said. “You hear stories how so-and-so was the first person to have a tractor or a threshing operation on the farm in this or that part of the county.”Murray said that farmers cooperated with each other a lot in those days. Life was harder and not every one had the new equipment so people had to work together a lot more. This built the strong communities that we inherited today.This year’s event was held at the Agricultural Heritage Museum at 29550 Palmyra Road, Warrenton.The threshers are planning a Plow Day in October, when the club and others from the community gather to demonstrate plowing with the antique equipment.

OLD SAW — This year's crosscut sawing competition winners, above, were father and son Duane and Alan Emge.

Jana Todd