American Heartland Reborn at 73rd Middletown Grange Fair
Mid-August exposition at Wrightstown fairgrounds
celebrates the county’s agricultural heritage.
It seems like only yesterday that Buckingham farmer Charlie Simons invited me aboard his harvester to prowl his cornfields. Soon dust swirled and biting insects flew everywhere as his monster of metallic know-how tramped the fields, gathering produce for the region’s supermarkets.
Charlie and wife Anna operated a 100-acre working farm on Holicong Road. There were hogs and cattle to feed plus a riding stable and training rink. Periodically, Charlie and farmhand Christian released piglets for kids and adults to chase around with laugh-out-loud glee. For Mary Anne and I, there were long walks in grassy fields beside a brook with a line of horses marshaling up behind, following us wherever we went as tenants who rented half of the Simons’ post-Colonial farmhouse.
The high point every August was the week-long Middletown Grange Fair in Wrightstown, where homeowners and the farming community paused to enjoy rural life in our increasingly suburbanized county. A couple of memories come to mind: Legendary chicken dinners served by farm folk, and exhibitions of rabbits, calves, chickens, dairy cattle, alpacas, llamas, hogs, sheep, lambs and goats lovingly raised by 4-H farm kids with bursting-at-the-seams pride.
The grange fair is the annual Disneyland of farming, where you experience the best produce, the best cakes and pies, the best animals, the best gardening and farming advice and the most fun, no matter what your age. Tractor parades, cattle and horse shows, live music and comedy, voting for the fair queen and the 25-ride midway add to the enjoyment. All produced by the county’s non-profit fraternity of farmers — the grange. The national organization came about after the Civil War to help reunite the country, promote economic well-being and bind families. The Middletown grange founded in 1876 in Langhorne is one of 213 fanning out across Pennsylvania with a membership of 7,200.
This year’s 73rd annual fair is scheduled from Aug. 16-20. The Middletown Grange purchased its Wrightstown property in 1966. A year later grange members carefully took down a barn and built a kitchen-dining hall. The barn was reassembled nearby. Later, a portion of the land was made available to the community baseball league. By 1976, two new permanent exhibition halls went up to display accomplishments of 4-H members. Finally, the grange built a judging arena in 1991. Two years later, the Pennsylvania State Association of County Fairs awarded the Middletown Grange Fair top acolades.
In my family’s annual pilgrimage to the fair, hobnobbing with Anna and Charlie was a highlight. Greeting old friends like Leonard Crooke, Ed Fleming and many others was catch-up time. I remember bouncing over the contours of Fleming’s 300-acre Shady Brook Farm in his pickup as he described working the fields straddling the border between Middletown and Lower Makefield. On occasion after dark, his family thought he had slipped inside and gone to bed. They locked the doors only to find the uncomplaining Ed asleep in his truck at dawn. Just life of the committed farmer.
I’ve known many of them as a native of California’s San Joaquin Valley. It’s there my father was an executive of Swift & Co. supplying fertilizers to growers throughout the valley. Back in those days in Merced, area tomato growers hosted an annual Labor Day picnic for farming families in a grove next to the Merced River. If any of you have seen the movie “Picnic” from 1955 starring Kim Novak and William Holden, you get the idea. The setting is a match.
For me these days here in Bucks County, the Middletown Grange Fair is connective tissue to what makes the country great: its unsung farmers. And for me, a flashback to cherished memories of childhood.
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Information on this year’s 73rd annual Middletown Grange Fair and a complete schedule of events can be found on the fair website at middletowngrangefair.org. Featured are live performances by five area bands: School of Rock Newtown (Wed. 7-10), Yall or Nothin Band (Thur. 7-10), Shameless classic rock (Fri. 7-10), Buzzerband (Sat. 7-10) and Tri-County Band (Sun. at 2 p.m). A tractor pull and cornhole tournament are also on tap at 11 a.m. Sun. The fairgrounds are located at 576 Penns Park Road in the village of Penns Park. Information: 215-598-7240.
Carl LaVO writes a weekly Bucks County history column for the Intelligencer and Bucks County Courier Times newspapers plus USA Today network. He can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com.
