Early Australian pioneering skills, trades, and heritage practises of the past are the feature theme at this year’s Sale Show.

The major attraction, on Friday, November 3 and Saturday, November 4 – is a heavy horse-powered working farm machinery exhibition not seen in Sale for many a year, exhibited by Wellsford Heritage Farm at the nationally acclaimed Bendigo Lost Trades and Heritage Crafts Fair earlier this year.

The exhibit includes a vintage horse works machine driving a chaff cutter, a horse-powered loader lifting produce bags onto a two-wheel dray, grain crusher, corn cobber, and rope-making display, heavy horse harnesses and an impressive gypsy wagon.

Demonstrators are Brett and Faye Kennedy of Fulham and Scott and Vanessa Wells of Wy Yung, all enthusiasts in preserving pioneering skills and lost trades.

They will talk about their practice in preparing their farm with horse-drawn plough, sowing feed crops, harvesting, cutting and stooking the crop, and, finally, making it into chaff.

“We will be happy to chat with people who would like to know more about pioneer farming, old implements and others, such as the types of seeds for cropping,” Mr Kennedy said.

Supporting exhibits include horse-drawn vehicles, Stratford and District Historical Society and Sale Historical Society, mounting a display of pioneer farm tools and related items and early Sale and Stratford information.

Stratford and District Historical Society secretary Marion Stothers said the society was delighted to be involved, saying many families were actively involved in the Sale Show from its beginning.

Complementing the pioneering skills and trades exhibits, the Sale Agricultural Society’s historian Laurie Smyth will display much of his many years of work, compiling almost 3000 pages of show records dating from 1861.

Mr Smyth said the work, up to 1920, included every recorded show entrant, prize winners, judges and other family names.

“It’s a massive task, and I am now working on later years so that perhaps within the next 12 months, it will all be complete,” he said.

Mr Smyth added it was important to recognise that the society was held to be Gippsland’s longest continuing community-elected committee, formed in 1859 following an expression of interest meeting at the Club Hotel, Foster Street, Sale.

Exhibits in the John MacLachlan Pavilion will also reflect pioneer years.

Opened in 1982 and named in honour of the society’s only life governor, John MacLachlan, a recently completed veranda extension will provide additional undercover weather protection.

Agricultural Society president Ross Jones said that while latter-day shows greatly varied in their program attractions, Sale Show continued to encompass much of the old and adopt modern trends.

Mr Jones said that to the early settlers, the agricultural show was a major event in their lives, enabling townspeople, as well as those of the land, to meet socially.

For competitors, the show was an opportunity to compare livestock, discuss farming methods, advancements and techniques, and exhibit their household science skills.

“Our indoor pavilions are packed each show with displays of floral work, art, photography, cooking, garden produce and much more,” Mr Jones said.

“There is as always a packed timetable of arena events, especially equestrian show jumping plus the ‘old’ in horse-drawn carriage classes, always a nostalgic favourite.”