E32—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, August 18,1984
2 centuries to be turned back at Hay Creek Valley
'HAYCREEK "
PALL EESTIVALX^
Main festival events all 3 days, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m,
Admission $2.00, under 12 free, free parking
'L
Weavers and spinners will be among the craftsmen
demonstrating oldtime endeavors of the Early-American
family at the Hay Creek Valley Fall Festival on Sept. 7-9 at
Joanna Furnace near Morgantown.
SEPTEMBER 7, 8 and 9
This 1905 “portable” steam engine will run the saw mill at the Hay Creek Valley
Festival. A number of steam engines and more than 200 turn-of-the-century gas engines
will be on display.
MORGANTOWN - The lifestyle
of the Joanna Furnace Iron Planta
tion throughout the past 200 years
will be recreated at the annual Hay
Creek Valley Fall Festival Sept. 7,
8 and 9. Each day of the festival,
the Hay Creek Valley Historical
Association will display a glimpse
of the good life as it was in an early
American iron plantation.
The festival is held at Historic
Joanna Furnace near Reading.
The furnace is located 3% miles
north of the Pennsylvania Turn
pike Morgantown interchange on
PA Rt. 10. The mam festival ac
tivities and demonstrations run
from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. all three
days.
Joanna Furnace consists of the
remnants of a major iron-making
community in southern Berks
County. The furnace operated for
104 years, from 1793 to 1897. At its
peak, Joanna employed 168
workmen in addition to providing
for over 1350 dependent farmers,
butchers, grist mill operators and
others nearby. At the height of its
operation, Historic Joanna Fur
nace used 5000 cords of hardwood
from its 6000 acres of woodland and
produced 2200 tons of castings per
year.
The furnace complex is owned
by the Hay Creek Valley group. It
was formerly part of the Grace
Mine property until Bethlehem
Mines Corporation donated the 25
acre tract to the association.
In 1983 about 50,000 visitors came
to the Fall Festival. Visitors to this
year’s festival can examine the
remains of the complex-the fur
nace stack, the blower engine
house, the office/store and the
ruins of the casting house, the
wheelwright shop and the charcoal
storage house. By the opening day
of the festival, the first recon
struction project will have been
completed. The blacksmith shop
will be finished complete with a
working blacksmith and artifacts
on display inside. Visitors will be
able to see archaelogical research
in progress at the casting house
and examine the plans for future
restoration of the furnace. Historic
Joanna Furnace is listed in both
the Pennsylvania and National
Registers of Historic sites.
The Fall Festival is not a
nostalgic look back, rather it is a
reaffirmation of the good life in the
Hay Creek Valley and its calm,
quiet life style. The festival
recreates the life on an early
American iron plantation from the
1790’s to just after the turn of the
20th century. Visitors will be able
to experience the way Joanna
Furnace families lived and
worked.
The goal of the festival is to be a
o¥l^0 ¥1^
There wilt be plenty to eat at the Hay Creek Valley Fall
Festival Sept. 7-9, including tasty shoofly pies.
family learning experience with
something for everyone from
children to grandparents. The
directors have designed the event
to be a two-way communication
medium. As one director put it,
“We want the visitors to talk to the
craftsmen; become involved with
them and learn from them. And
better yet, the visitors can relate to
the craftsmen knowledge from
their own background-perhaps
something the craftsmen don’t
even know. We want to learn as
much from the people as they leam
from us.
Years ago craftsmen and farm
ers didn’t write ‘how-to-manuals’
they showed their sons and
daughters how to do things. The
crafts people at the festival
learned in that way and are now
teaching others how to practice
their crafts. This oral tradition is
what the Fall Festival is all about.
In twenty or thirty years if these
traditions and techniques are not
passed on. They will be gone
forever.”
Skilled housewrights will form
lumber and structural beams from
logs. They will use a pit saw for
some operations. Some men will be
boring logs to make wooden pipes.
Other craftsmen will split fence
posts. Some will hand split shakes
to be used as shingles. Blacksmiths
will make wrought iron farm
implerheflts and kitchen utensils.
The lost art of making wagon
wheels will be revived by a
wheelwright. Old fashioned
brooms will be made. Coopers,
cabinet makers, basket makers
and tinsmiths will demonstrate
their crafts.
Association members will be
dressed in colonial clothing while
going about their tasks. The ladies
will show off domestic specialties
by demonstrating spinning,
natural dying and weaving of wool
and flax, chair caning, herbal
medicines, making sauerkraut,
quilting and other domestic crafts.
They will also bake homemade
bread, make shoofly pies, apple
cider and apple butter. These
items will all be available for sale.
The Fall Festival has one of the
largest concentrations of working
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