Amish Fireworks

Yesterday was a day full of good food, friends and Amish Fireworks.

Last year, my friend Sheila invited me to join her at a family picnic nearby.  It is an annual event and I was thrilled to be included.  They have lots of good food and many of the locals and not so locals come over to enjoy the day and to experience some 'old time transportation' in the form of steam powered tractors that once were used to plow the local farmer's fields and do the work that was done by horses and mules.

This year I had invited Marji and Danny to come along with me and since she had been in the hospital keeping Danny from going to Michigan to his family reunion, they were able to come.

A couple of the family members own these incredible steam driven tractors.  Most people who want to see these machines have to go to the Rough and Tumble Museum or attend the tractor events at the facility at Rough and Tumble.  These wonderful machines are actually brought to the backyard of this house and set up so that anyone who wants to can get up close and personal with the machines and talk to the owner/drivers about how they work.  This is a bit of a fuzzy picture of the two of the machines sitting in the yard.

Here is a short video of some of the people checking out the Russel machine.  The young lady who is closing the front of the engine is the owner.  She also works at the Strasburg Railroad and is the only female engineer that runs the steam engines there and she also fabricates parts to keep these magnificent machines running.

These machines are running the entire time we are there.  In fact, they use the steam from the engines to flash cook corn on the cob!!!  Talk about good flavor!  The have the tractors connected to devices that allow them through a very large belt system so that a full load can be placed on the engines without moving their wheels.

At dusk, they begin preparing for the show.  At dark they feed a specially prepared fuel source into the firebox that causes a tall shower of parks to come out of the smoke stack going dome 20+ feet into the air.  Hence, Amish Fireworks.  Below is a video of the Russel machine entertaining us with a spectacular light show.  It is a small continuous video, but there are dark places where the engineers were stoking the firebox with the special fuel.

And if you just want to see a still picture of sparks.... well, here it is.  Not nearly as interesting as the video.  Just keep in mind, it is dark and hard to take normal pictures in the dark!!!