Pa. festival has celebrated rural life for 24 years

A festival in southern Pennsylvania has been celebrating rural life for 24 years. The Rural Life Festival is scheduled for this weekend in Newburg, about 37 miles west of Harrisburg. Free events focus on cultural history and Americana, Denny Clopper reports for the Valley Times-Star in Shippensburg, Pa., about 11 miles from Newburg. (Photo by Matthew O'Haren of The Sentinel in Carlisle, Pa.: Making butter at the 2012 festival)

Organizer Omar Barnhart told Clopper, “Back in July 1989 it began with some people who wanted a special day. It's a great event for the community, so the people can come out and learn how things were done in the older or past days."

The highlight of this year's festival is old-fashioned butter making, which Barnhart says "starts at the beginning – milking the cow – and follows through the churning process after an old-fashioned hand-cranked cream separator is used to separate milk and cream," Clopper reports. Other attractions consist of farming displays and demonstrations, broom-making, grain threshing, turning raw grain into bread, sheep dog herding, a working blacksmith, a horse drawn binder, a functioning steam engine, plowing demonstrations, quilting, sheep shearing, homemade foods, a pedal tractor pull, horse drawn wagon rides, and a bluegrass and gospel concert. (Read more)