Grassroots engineering on view at Bathurst Agricultural Show

Museum staff, blacksmiths demonstrate almost forgotten skills from SA’s past

Make your own braai hook under the supervision of a real-life blacksmith, watch mielies being ground and then take home a bag of mielie meal, watch a frontier-era wagon wheel getting its metal “tyre” fitted, and buy piping-hot hand-kneaded bread fresh out of a wood-fired oven.

Those are some of the not-quite-yetlost arts you can experience and enjoy at the Bathurst Agricultural Museum’s stand at the Bathurst Agricultural Show from March 22-24.

The museum is right next-door, but they’ll be bringing activities and memorabilia to the showgrounds so visitors to the show can get a taste of the cultural experiences on offer there.

Leading the charge are museum stalwarts Alan Pike, who is also the curator, and Jon Pieterse.

“We’re going to be grinding straightrun yellow mielie-meal on a 1910 grist mill powered by a 1939 International Harvester LB stationary engine,” Pieterse said.

Visitors to the museum’s stand at the show would be able to buy bags of the freshly ground mielie meal. It will be sold in specially printed cloth flour bags which means it will also make a great from-the-farm gift.

There are other special hand-crafted gifts that you’ll be hard-put to find anywhere else. In addition to specially printed mugs, T-shirts and other memorabilia, you can buy rocket stoves (great for camping and loadshedding), skillets, ladles and tripods for pots all forged by the museum’s own blacksmiths.

Putting the metal covering on a wagon wheel is called “shodding” and Talk of the Town readers will recall photographs of the process from Alexandria on December 16.

At 10am on Saturday March 23, visitors can watch this grassroots engineering operation being done, as it was when wagons were a primary form of transport.

One of the wheels of a five-ton transport wagon donated by the Ballantyne family, and which is on display in the museum, will be “retyred”.

The museum will be offering tractor rides on a trailer drawn by a tractor, that is.

And you’ll be able to see a 1928 John Deere tractor, as well as a mid-‘50s Field Marshall tractor, and a ‘Vaaljapie’

a Ferguson TE20 manufactured in the UK from 1946 onwards.

All of these things will be happening at the museum’s stand at the showgrounds; however, if you’d like to visit the museum, you can arrange it through Yolanda Hattingh, at the stand.

Pictures: SUE MACLENNAN COOL STUFF: Curator Alan Pike shows off some of the supercool stuff that will be on sale at the Bathurst Agricultural Museum’s stand at the Bathurst Agricultural Show, from March 22-24. He’s holding up handforged skillet and ladle, and behind him is an array of clothing, mugs and other memorabilia.

LOAD-SHEDDING STANDBY: This hand-forge rocket stove works with minimal fuel (twigs). These will be on sale at the museum’s stand. They are ideal to cook on when there’s no electricity supply.

HAND-FORGED: A trivet (threelegged pot stand) crafted by the Bathurst Agricultural Museum’s blacksmiths. Items like this will be on sale at the museum’s stand during the show.