A day of old-fashioned farm demonstrations and family activities is planned Oct. 31 in Moundridge as a fundraiser for the proposed Moundridge Immigrant House Cultural Center & Museum.
The Immigrant House Plowing Festival will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 520 W. Cole St.
Admission is $10 for adults, with children 12 and younger admitted free.
A $10 button provides admission to all festival activities.
The festival will feature demonstrations of plowing with horse-drawn equipment and vintage tractors, along with a vintage tractor and equipment show.
Admission also includes access to the Moundridge Museum Complex, including its working blacksmith shop.
The complex includes the Cole House Museum and other exhibits focusing on Moundridge-area history and agriculture.
Children’s activities will include pumpkin decorating, an FFA petting zoo, corn shelling, Corn & Coins games and barrel-train rides.
Proceeds will benefit the Moundridge Immigrant House Cultural Center & Museum, a project intended to preserve and interpret the history of the Swiss Volhynian Mennonites who settled in the Moundridge area beginning in 1874.
According to the Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association, the project recently acquired a three-acre property immediately west of the Moundridge Museum Complex.
The organization said the property is the same land where agricultural events were held during Moundridge’s 150th-anniversary commemoration and where Turkey Red Wheat was raised.
Architectural planning is nearing completion with fundraising now underway.
The planned cultural center takes its name from the original immigrant house built by the Santa Fe Railroad for newly arrived Mennonite families.
In 1874, Swiss Mennonites from Volhynia, in what is now Ukraine, traveled to Kansas seeking religious freedom.
The railroad provided the immigrant house west of present-day Moundridge as temporary housing while families established their own farms.
The building also served as an early worship center and school.
Historical accounts indicate that families lived there together until they could establish homes of their own.
The Immigrant House project is being developed through the Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association, a nonprofit organization focused on preserving and sharing the history and culture of the Swiss Mennonite immigrants and their descendants.
For more information about the project, search for the group on Facebook or visit the Swiss Mennonite website at the following address: www.swissmennonite.org.
