What Is Old Fashion Farmers Day Silk Hope Labor Day Event in Chatham County

Eric Andrews discusses the fun Old Fashion Farmers Day in Silk Hope. It takes place each year on Labor Day, and you can read all about it here: https://silkhopenc.org/old-fashion-fa…

Speaker 1:           Tell us about the Old Fashioned Farmers Day in Silk Hope.

Speaker 2:           So there’s a civic organization called Ruritan. And they sponsor an event every Labor Day weekend. And those of us that live there a long time, sometimes it rains that weekend, sometimes it’s good weather. But nestled between the Ruritan Civic Building the Silk Hope convenience store and the Silk Hope Fire Department and the Silk Hope school there’s about, on one side of the road, is about 20 acres, 20 to 40 acres total of this land that Ruritan sponsors Old Fashioned Farmers Day . And they have some steam engines and they run a sawmill. So people can see how a steam engine cuts wood, cuts lumber.

They also have homemade ice cream that is made from the steam engines, which is pretty neat. There’s a little entertainment area where they do some fiddle and banjo playing. And they have a clogging contest, which is fun to watch. Many people set up booths.

They have chicken tenders and fish fry. But there’s also an antique tractor pull. So on the other side of the road, they do a tractor pull and people come from all across the country with these 30, 50, 70, even 100 year old tractors that are… This is an expensive hobby. People put a lot of money in renovating these tractors. And then they do an antique tractor pull where they’re pulling a weighted sled that gets heavier and heavier as you pull it along.

But the most interesting thing, and I used to be in Silk Hope Ruritan when I lived there. Most interesting thing about the civic organization is that every single kid that graduates from Silk Hope school and goes on to college, receives a scholarship from that Silk Hope Ruritan. And so that’s pretty special where it’s a local organization that certainly is giving back to the community. Labor Day weekend, you might be at the beach, but if you’re in Chatham County hanging around, I highly recommend it. It’s pretty fun.