Wilsons hosting 10th annual Old Tyme Harvest
August 25, 2025, 10:05 am
Ryan Kiedrowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
In what’s become a local tradition, the Wilson Old Tyme Harvest south of Wawota will mark a solid decade on Saturday, August 30.
“We’ve attended some of the threshing steam shows in other areas, other museums have them,” explained Kevin Wilson. “We just decided about 10 years ago that it was time we tried having a little venue of our own. Every year it grows, it gets bigger and bigger every year.”
The event is a chance to see some of the earliest farm machinery in the area proving its worth. Some of the equipment is in excess of a century old, including a wooden threshing machine dating back to 1919. Over the years, the Wilsons have seen a wide range of age groups enjoying the event, some who have experience using the older equipment and those who have never seen the equipment outside of a museum.
“A lot of people reminisce about it, it’s kind of a blast from the past,”
Wilson said. “And for the younger generation that has no idea of how the pioneers used to farm, it’s a good education.”
Every year, the Wilson family balances holding the event with their own operation. This can be tricky some years, depending on what the crop conditions are like as the busy harvest season approaches.
“There’s museums and established venues around the countryside where they continue to have these,” Wilson said of the special demonstration day. “What we’re doing is our own personal venue. Of course, it’s family-operated, and we’ve been working on some of this stuff already for a month. Now it’s ‘go time’ here, and we continue to work on it. With this old stuff, you never truly do get everything done prior to the day because it’s just such a monumental task!”
The Old Tyme Harvest kicks off with a tractor parade at 10 am where people can see firsthand some of the equipment that helped break the land—or at least make things easier on many farms.
“We parade a few of our own tractors, we try to put people on them that have that skill,” Wilson explained. “It’s a smaller parade where we drive some of them, and people actually get to see them running versus on static display.”
Following the tractor parade is the antique combining demonstration slated for 11 am with threshing happening a little later at 2 pm.
“We’re featuring our combines this year,” Wilson said. “We got quite an array of combines, but we also want to go right from field to fork, so we’ll thresh the wheat, clean it, crush it, mill it, render it into a dough. We’ve got an old wood cookstove set up in a bakery here, and the idea is to bake a rendition of buns or bread that day and the public can sample it, too.”
The threshing will also feature people familiar with safely operating the machinery to illustrate how much work truly went into processing the cut wheat.
“The threshing machines, we’ve got three of them,” Wilson said. “We run them, we pitch the sheaves into them, and we have a certain amount of the public help out with that as well. There’s an inherent danger to it too, right? There’s big old flat belts driving these machines and everything is open.
There’s a lot of caution and care that you have to take.”
New this year will be a restored pioneer house, which will be an interesting addition to the farm’s collection.
“It was just a small wood structure building, it was never a house, but we’ve turned it into a house,” Wilson explained. “It’s been all re-sided with the old siding, old windows, and door in it, and a little veranda on it. It’s all painted up and the inside may be a little bit more modern than we would have liked, but we were utilizing materials that we had on-hand here to keep it a reasonable budget.”
Inside the new addition are some local treasures of historic and sentimental importance.
“There’s some old furniture in it, some old displays, and I’ve got my cousin’s World War II uniform on display,” Wilson said. “The beauty of it is, there’s a cot in there and if anybody wants to spend the night, we’ve slept in it a few times. You’re quite able to do that, too.”
The pioneer house is part of the growing line of outbuildings that the Wilson’s encourage visitors to check out.
“We’ve got a little bakery here set up now, and an old British American Oil and Gas shed amongst our other buildings, too,” Wilson said. “That part of it’s growing. We want to set up a blacksmith mechanic shop here next year, so that will be an addition.”
Depending on weather and harvest conditions, the Wilsons usually see around 100 people at their event each year.
“It’s the 10th anniversary, we’re expecting pretty good attendance this year, maybe a little bit above average,” Wilson said.
The Wilson farm is nine miles south of Wawota on the 603 grid, and lunch will be provided for a modest fee by the United Church Group.
