Once a year, antique farm machines are put to work plowing deep into the earth at Bonney Bright’s Farm in southern Virginia Beach.
It’s a showcase of past farming practices, and, of course, it’s meant to be fun. On Saturday, dozens of vintage tractors and plows were on display or demonstrating their capabilities.
Some tractors, having been in use for generations, were hard at work. Others, many of which had been carefully restored, were on display for admiration.
There were tractors of all sizes and spectators ranged in ages.
Bright is a longtime farmer, and he and his friend Ashton Lewis founded Plow Day in 2019. Bright said the event stemmed from a conversation after Lewis attended a plow day and talked about holding one at the farm.
It has become an autumn tradition in the rural southern reaches of the city. Most folks are from North Carolina and Virginia, but sometimes people travel from the Midwest.
“It just kept getting bigger and bigger,” Bright said.
It keeps the heritage of farming alive and lets younger generations see how farming was once done.
“A lot of young folks do not know anything about the way farming went on years ago,” Bright said.
“I do it because I like to see people, you know, have a good time,” he added. “And I think everybody needs to put something in your community. You don’t need to always take out. You need to put in.”
Henry Curling of Chesapeake was among those who plowed row after row at the farm on Saturday. The retired grain farmer loved being out with the antique machines, showing what they can do.
“Because you just love it,” he said. “When you smell the soil opening, out of the soil, how good it smells, and it just gets into your blood. … And just like everybody else out here, they’re doing it because they love it.”
Roger Manning of Williamston, North Carolina, has participated in Plow Day several times, though he demonstrated a plow drawn by draft horses.
He’s a masonry contractor by trade, but he loves horses and began participating in events with them.
“Just something about watching that dirt, the smell of the dirt, watching the dirt turn over,” he said. “Just going back 100 years, I guess, as much as anything.”
He’s not sure he’d like to do it for a living, though.
“I love it on probably about 15 Saturdays a year,” he said.
Donald Peterson of Chesapeake displayed a carefully restored 1953 Ford Golden Jubilee tractor. He spoke with Dallas Belcher of Portsmouth about it.
“That’s the tractor that made Henry Ford rich,” Belcher said.
Peterson said he’s a “city slicker” who just always liked the body style of the classic tractor.
And the project of restoring – “fiddling,” he called it – something with history.
Chesapeake’s Barry Hathaway, who owns a farm and is a collector, plowed Saturday on a tractor that’s been in his family for decades.
“I love to see these old tractors run,” he said.
