Tots get close-up look at modern day farm equipment in St. Charles
Eyes wide, mouths agape, tykes gazed in awe at the monstrous green-and-yellow machine before them.
Lifted up a ladder by their dads and firmly clutching the hand of a volunteer, they entered the cab of a bullet rotor combine.
A toot of the horn later, they scrambled out, with big smiles.
"It was cool!" said Robert Nitsch of St. Charles, who had waited in a line with younger brothers Adam and Jack to clamber into the John Deere 9770 STS at the Kane County Farm Bureau's "Touch-a-Tractor" Day Saturday.
"Bringing a little bit of the farm to the city" is how the bureau's information director, Ryan Klassy, described the fifth annual event. The goal is to show kids some of the really big machinery that gets food to the table, he said.
The event shows the change in equipment, from walk-behind, single-blade plows pulled by horses that settlers used in the mid-1800s to a 1951 Case/IH tractor to a humongous modern-day 36-row John Deere planter with GPS-equipped seed distributors.
"Kids really just like the opportunity to climb on the equipment," said Steve Arnold, Farm Bureau manager. Middle-aged people reminisce about tractors they saw as kids on their grandparents' yards or farms.
"Even in an urban setting, almost everyone knows about antique tractors," Arnold said.
The kids could try hand cranking a corn grinder to make feed for chickens and compare it to a n ancient gasoline-powered one made in Batavia featuring a "hit-and-miss" flywheel engine that produced a distinctive pop sound.
They could touch chicks, born Monday, soothing them to sleep by rubbing their heads as taught by agriculture literacy specialist Suzi Myers.
There was a fundraising raffle, where kids could win toys, including a red Farmall tractor, and adults could win $5,000, a John Deere Gator yard tractor, or $100 in groceries every week for a year.
The event continues from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today.
The bureau is at Randall Road and Oak Street in St. Charles, just north of the Kane County fairgrounds and south of Route 64. For details, visit kanecfb.com.