It was a day full of activities at the Birch Hills Heritage Museum as the 25th annual Threshing and Family Fun Day was in full force.
Duane Mohn, the president of the Birch Hills and District Historical Society says the event was an overall success.
“I’m very happy with it today. It’s one of those events that is really weather-dependent, and we had about as perfect weather as you could ask for. This is effectively our 25th, silver anniversary. We have been going a little longer than that, but we lost two years through COVID.”
The event kicked off with a pancake breakfast at 7:30 a.m. before a combined church service at 10:30. A parade featuring many classic cars began at noon and a threshing demonstration at 3 p.m.
Volunteers feed hay into the threshing machine at the Birch Hills Threshing and Family Fun Day on Sunday afternoon.
Mohn says the board is always looking at new ideas for attendees.
“We added different items, we’ve built on some of the ones that we had and we’ve involved things that we never thought of before. If you look at the community, you realize that it grew from agricultural roots, and the fact we are able to celebrate that history and expand enough that we can look at things which are more of interest now than the threshing machines. For example, we had our second annual photo contest. We would have never dreamed of a photo contest until we got some interested young board members on.”
The photo contest took submissions from all over, including one submission from Barrhead, Alta. The event was free to attend and had activities for all ages including a petting zoo and live music for participants of all ages.
A young boy pets Chili the rabbit at the petting zoo as part of the Birch Hills Threshing and Family Fun Day on Saturday afternoon.
Mohn added that the Historical Society was really thankful for the support and the time contributed by volunteers to make the event a success.
“There’s so much that depends on our volunteers. If it weren’t for the 10 to 15 people who have been intensely involved this week, we’d have had great difficulty putting this on. We had people showing up here at 7 o’clock in the morning in order to work for half a day and then have to leave. Even this morning when everything was almost in place, we had people here at 6:30 and they were helping to get the final pieces together. It is all dependent on the volunteers and without them, we wouldn’t be. We couldn’t exist.”
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