Steam engine run added for this year’s festival at Moynalty
The tranquillity of Moynalty will again be broken by the sounds and sights of a bygone era when the Moynalty Steam Threshing Festival takes place next week.
The 44th annual event is on August 11 in the grounds of the Moynalty Stream Threshing Museum and parkland. The festivities start on the Saturday afternoon (August 10) with the vintage charity tractor run, and new this year, a steam engine road run, leaving the village at 2pm.
The run will leave Moynalty Steam Threshing museum (A82 C6K7) and proceed to Ballincleva, Billywood, Mullagh, stop for an hour at Kilian’s Lodge Hotel, and return to Moynalty for 6.30pm. The run will be led back into the village by the Corduff Pipe Band.
On the main day the stage will be set by the Steam Threshing Committee, where displays of vanishing work practices and food production can be seen alongside craft making and vintage displays.
It’s a great day out for young and old as it has something for everyone, displays and demonstrations remind us of how things were for our fore-fathers: horse and steam power, reaping and binding, threshing and flailing. Traditional crafts such as basket weaving, steel forging, hot shoeing, tin craft, wood turning and harness making are all to be seen, while there will be demonstrations on making butter at the full-size replica cottage. Brown bread, colcannon, boxty and pancakes will all be cooked on the open fires to taste and for sale.
There will be a threshing display and the organisers are delighted to welcome back their friends from Dorset doing a demonstration of how roads were made over 100 years ago – a massive crowd pleaser in 2018.
Moynalty Steam Threshing also boasts a fantastic museum of artefacts and memorabilia which will be open for viewing on the day.
The children will be well entertained by the amusements on site and can visit the many farm animals on the old style farmyard or enter their dogs in the dog show.
The Irish Lumberjack show is an exciting display of fearless skills and displays of wood-chopping, pole-climbing, chainsaw racing. Loggers compete in a variety of disciplines based on traditional logging skills to determine the best lumberjack skills.
There will also be a ‘Queen of Steam’ and jiving competitions (entries for the latter taken on the day).
There will be music and craic all day, with Paul Leavy, Cliona Hagan, Chantelle Padden, and Matt Leavy and entertainment from the local Jennifer Brady school of Irish Dancing. Then Mike Denver will take to the stage in a grand finale of music.
• Moynalty Steam Threshing, Sunday August 11, open 9am-7.30pm, free parking.