The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
CELEBRATING AGRICULTURE
Annual Grange Fair pays tribute to farming traditions
RIVERTON — The Grange’s importance in U.S. history is sometimes overlooked, but not in Riverton.
On a warm Saturday, the town celebrated the 29th annual Riverton Grange Fair with about 30 visitors indoors at the Grange Hall at 9 Riverton Road.
Riverton Grange Secretary Raine Pedersen, 63, said, “The weather kept some away, but people showed up today.”
The fair featured prize-winning vegetables, baked goods, flowers, plants and photographs — showcasing the best in town. Older folks caught up with each other while participating in a raffle as children busied themselves with educational activities.
Pedersen and Jason and Teresa Fuller of Riverton’s Grassy Knoll Farm, discussed sheep at a table near the Grange Hall’s front door. The Fullers raise babydoll Southdown sheep. Pedersen discussed the care and feeding of the livestock as well as scrapie, a fatal, degenerative nervous system disease that causes chronic wasting in sheep and goats.
Pedersen, who started raising two Finnsheep and one lamb since April, said, “We take visitors through the fleecing and wool process. My sheep couldn’t be here today because they are too skittish. One is 7 months old, the others 3 years old.”
Pedersen said she was inspired to raise sheep after she had a vision a few years ago. The vision inspired her to do research along with her late father, William Anstett, who had raised goats.
Pedersen said the sheep display fits into the tradition of the fair’s educational presentations, which included such topics as beekeeping, gardening and making maple syrup.
In the Grange Hall kitchen, Grange member Phil Prelli flipped hamburgers for the lunchtime crowd.
Prelli, 69, who was elected in November as vice president of the nationwide organization of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry (spanning a 50-year Grange career), said, “The number of entries in fruit and plants is less this year because of the previous rain, which brought critters.”
Dennis Jasmine, 71, of Falls Village, agreed with Prelli, adding the weather has affected his farm’s hay production. “The corn is doing well,” he said.
Prelli said he joined the Junior Grange at 14 and pursued a career in the insurance industry. But as a teenager, he worked at his grandparents’ farm. “What is nice about the small grange fairs is that it brings back agricultural and farming,” Prelli said.
As a Grange leader, Prelli said he is on a mission to improve rural broadband service.
“Rural broadband is an issue,” he said. “It is not fair to businesses in rural America if they still have dialup service.”
“Large farms in the Midwest have corn to sell, and they lose out online to city businesses because they can’t keep up,” Prelli said. “Also, everything changes so quickly — for example, a business needs to sell its products online and at the right time.”
Prelli has served on the organization’s board of directors and was Connecticut’s commissioner of the Department of Agriculture. He said lack of rural health care remains another issue. “There are now telephysicians,” he said.
Pedersen said she joined the town’s Junior Grange in 1962 at age 6, as was the tradition among her family and friends. Her parents were active in the Grange in the 1950s and 1960s. Her five siblings joined as well. “I was very young when I joined,” she said. “I was in the Junior Grange. Everybody in the neighborhood was in it. It is still a nice group of people.”
Pedersen said the Grange has plenty of activities to keep children occupied. Aside from the agricultural programs, kids saw musicians and took part in Halloween parties. “My favorite activity was the ‘mystery drive,’” she said. “We had to find 12 items and visit people’s homes in the community in order to find them.”
Pedersen said the children who had joined the Grange with her in the 1960s are still active. “The members today are colleagues I have known since Day One,” she said. “They are members from Riverton and Barkhamsted.”
Pedersen said Grange activities, like the Chili Cook-Off in March 2017, had netted two new members as well as a greater awareness of the group. “It brought a lot of people in,” she said.
Connecticut officials last week reported a 15 percent increase in beginning farmers between the two most recent U.S. agricultural censuses — second only to Rhode Island. Connecticut is just one of eight states with increases.
The Riverton Grange is a part of a longtime national rural movement that has had its ups and downs over the years.
Riverton, the historic district of the town of Barkhamsted, was a 19thcentury industrial village that started in small settlements along the Still River and the East Branch of the Farmington River.
According to the website United States History at www.u-s-history.com, the Grange movement began in the 1860s by Department of Agriculture employee Oliver Hudson Kelley.
Kelley had toured the South and had been disturbed by the lack of sound agricultural practices.
In 1867, with others, Kelley formed the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, to learn how to grow as citizens and leaders. Local affiliates were called “granges” and members, whose minimum age is 14, were called “grangers.”
According to the Connecticut State Grange website, granges’ role today is to provide legislative voices. Granges are structured as Junior Granges for children five to 14, who hold their own meetings; the Subordinate Grange, or the local grange; the Pomona Grange, which is the equivalent of the county-wide, regional grange; the State Grange, the delegate body representing the Subordinate and Pomona Granges; and the National Grange, a parent branch of the Order.
The Riverton Grange, organized in 1908, has 88 members, and a core group of 20 who are regularly active at events. Grange elections are held every two years. The Riverton Grange meets on the first Friday of each month at 7:30 p.m.; open meetings at the Grange Hall are held on the third Friday of each month at 6:30 p.m.
At the fair’s end, raffle-prize winners and longtime Grange members Bob O’Connor, 88, and Shirley Moore, 93, displayed their winnings, including a wood flute, a jigsaw puzzle, a water jug and candles.
O’Connor said of this year’s fair: “It is great to help out. For 55 years, I was active in the organization with my wife.”
Moore, who won a first-prize blue ribbon for her homemade doughnuts in the baked goods division, said of this year’s festivities: “It was a good turnout.”
For information on the Riverton Grange, email Riverton@CTStateGrange.org.