I love old machinery and the Dutchess County Fair had quite a lot, most I believe courtesy of Boice Antique Machines, featured in an article in the Daily Freeman News – At Dutchess County Fair, a new look at old machines:

There’s a symphony of combustion engines in the Antique Engine and Machinery Show at the Dutchess County Fair.

Among the sputtering, clanking and banging is the sound of steam-powered saw being operated by Jonathan Boice, who says the 1907 International Harvester machine was a turning point for farmers, allowing them to cut wood easily.

“What you would be doing is cutting fire wood the length of your stove or fire place,” Boice said.

“This is when someone went from doing it by hand to doing it with a power saw,” he said. “This was really the first power saw. I don’t know of an earlier machine than this for cutting wood.”

The 6-horsepower machine’s engine turns at 335 revolutions per minute.

“Attached is a box that looks like a tower and the water runs over trays that cools and evaporates,” Boice expalined. “As it evaporates, you have to add more. It carries about 15 gallons and has some leaks due to its age, so during the day, we may add water once or twice.”

Boice said the saw is largely in the same condition as when it was found several years ago, with ownership traced to a farm in Millerton.

“Mechanically, there were broken parts on it,” he said. “We didn’t want to paint it or anything like that. These machines are only original once.”

There are about 20 pieces of equipment on display in the Antique Engine and Machinery Show, including a rock-crushing machine that demonstrates the power of America’s industrial revolution and oat-processing equipment that turns a harvest into food.

Boice family members have been collecting the equipment over several decades and take several weeks to prepare for the fair.

“We work on this about three weekends before the fair — loading it up, bringing it over and making sure everything is ready to run,” he said.

“I wouldn’t quite call it a business,” Boice said. “It’s a family hobby. My nephew is in charge, and his father started it. … I’m one of the original ones in it, along with my brother’s wife, and there are some of our other family members that are involved, and we couldn’t do this without them.”

Below “The Abenaque”, which has its own interesting story described in an article in Farm Collector entitled The Short, Odd Story of the Abenaque Tractor.

Taken with a Sony RX-100 M3.