THE BALLOON MAN

Foothills Heritage Fair puts focus on the farm

 

Photo by Nathan Gray, Anderson Independent Mail
Kevin Harbin works on a cotton gin that he estimates was built in the 1880s. The gin is at the Carolina Foothills Heritage Fair at Fair Play.
By Ray Chandler
from-- andersonindependentmail.com
Posted October 3, 2012
AIR PLAY — Yes, there's a Ferris wheel with bright lights and a tilt-a-whirl that goes clack! And yes, there's the smell of cotton candy and frying corn dogs.

But those compete with the sound of squealing pigs and the slight smell of … well, other things on the wind that remind you that the Oconee County's Foothills Heritage Fair is about agriculture and its heritage and continuing role in this region.

Kevin Harbin doesn't need to be told that.

Harbin feeds raw cotton into a rebuilt cotton gin at his exhibition of antique farm machinery. Over the roar of the gasoline engine rigged to the drive gear, he explains how the 40 spinning saw blades rip the seeds from the cotton that is then brushed off the blades by rotating brushes.

The gin has been in his family since the 1880s. "It was brought in to Westminster by train," he said.

Nearby is an antique thresher and hay baler, both heirlooms. The thresher is almost as old as the gin, and Harbin has a tintype photograph of the thresher at work when it was nearly new.

His family has been involved in agriculture in this region since the 1790s, he said, and some of his fondest memories are of fairs. He remembers when the Anderson Fair came to town on the railroad and the train carrying it had to switch tracks near Seneca.

"The whole town would turn out to watch that," he said.

So for Harbin, fairs and agriculture go together in some mystic chord of memory that the Foothills Heritage Fair strikes. The fair is in its fourth year, and he's been part of most of them.
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