Ford’s familiar blue and gray tractors are taking over Vienna, Ohio, this weekend as the Antique Tractor Club of Trumbull County celebrates its 30th annual tractor show with one of the most recognizable names in American farm machinery as the featured brand.
The three-day show runs August 14 through August 16, 2026, at the club grounds at 1653 Ridge Road in Vienna, Ohio, with displays, tractor pulling, a car show, demonstrations, auctions and family activities scheduled throughout the weekend. The annual summer event traces its roots to 1995.
This year’s Ford theme gives the event more historical weight than a typical machinery gathering. Ford tractors represent an important period in the mechanization of American agriculture, and the show offers visitors an opportunity to see surviving machines from that history outside a museum setting.
Ford Tractors Headline the 2026 Show
Ford’s involvement with tractors reaches back more than a century. Henry Ford completed an experimental lightweight tractor around 1907 that he called an “automotive plow.” The surviving machine in The Henry Ford collection was powered by a 1905 Ford Model B automobile engine and is regarded as either Ford’s first or, more likely, second experimental lightweight tractor.
Those experiments eventually led to the Fordson, which entered production in 1917. Early production tractors were initially shipped to Britain as World War I placed enormous pressure on agricultural labor and food production. Domestic U.S. Fordson sales followed, helping establish the tractor as one of the early examples of agricultural machinery produced using automobile-style mass manufacturing methods.
That history makes Ford an especially appropriate featured marque for an antique tractor show. Collectors can potentially cover several major eras of tractor development within one brand, from early Fordson machines to N-Series tractors and the later blue Ford models familiar to generations of farmers.
Golden Jubilee Remains a Collector Favorite
One machine likely to draw particular attention among Ford enthusiasts is the Ford NAA, better known in its first model year as the Golden Jubilee.
Ford introduced the NAA for 1953 to commemorate the company’s 50th anniversary. It replaced the enormously successful N-Series and introduced several significant changes, including an overhead-valve four-cylinder engine and an engine-driven hydraulic system that could operate independently of the PTO. The tractor weighed roughly 2,840 pounds and was larger than the 8N it replaced.
The Golden Jubilee has become particularly recognizable among collectors because of its special 50th-anniversary hood emblem and its position between Ford’s famous N-Series machines and the numbered tractor families that followed.
For a heritage show, that is exactly the type of tractor that can turn a lineup into something more meaningful than a collection of restored equipment. Visitors can effectively walk through the evolution of farm mechanization by comparing machines separated by decades of engineering.
Tractor Pulls and Car Show
Saturday brings one of the busiest programs of the weekend.
The grounds will host a car show alongside the tractor displays, while club members compete in garden tractor and full-size tractor pulls. The Ground Pounders Garden Pulling Club is also returning for another appearance.
Tractor pulling adds an important working element to a preservation-oriented event. Antique tractors were designed to produce useful drawbar power, not simply look good after restoration, and seeing older machines operate under load gives spectators a much better sense of their mechanical character.
That combination of static displays and operating equipment is one reason regional tractor shows remain relevant even as the machinery being preserved becomes increasingly removed from everyday farming.
Parade of Power on Sunday
Sunday morning begins with breakfast followed by a 9 a.m. church service led by Pastor Ed Agler.
Afterward, the Parade of Power will give owners an opportunity to drive their equipment past spectators rather than leaving the tractors parked in rows.
For enthusiasts, the parade can be one of the most revealing parts of an antique equipment show. Engine sound, gearing, exhaust note and even the speed at which an old tractor moves are part of the experience that cannot be captured by a stationary display.
The weekend concludes at approximately 4 p.m. Sunday with the final basket raffle drawing and a meat raffle featuring a package donated by Kempf’s Custom Butchering of Middlefield, Ohio.
New Dessert Auction Joins the Program
A new attraction for 2026 is a Saturday dessert auction scheduled shortly before the afternoon basket raffle drawing.
Mike Davis will handle auctioneering duties, with cakes, pies, cookies, cobblers and other desserts available to bidders.
Separate basket raffles will also be held each day, with drawings scheduled for 4 p.m. Winners do not have to remain on the grounds to claim their prizes.
The addition may seem far removed from tractor collecting, but it reflects what has kept local machinery shows alive for decades. Successful events usually become community gatherings rather than narrowly focused equipment exhibitions, giving families who may not know the difference between a Fordson and an 8N another reason to attend.
Antique Machinery and Blacksmithing
The show extends beyond tractors.
A working blacksmith demonstration at the south end of the grounds will show traditional hot and cold forging techniques using an anvil. Nearby historical structures include a former post office building from East Orwell, Ohio, and a scale house from Lockwood, Ohio.
The post office display incorporates mail-sorting cubbies that originally came from the West Farmington, Ohio Post Office.
Visitors can also explore the Charlie Dyson Memories of Yesteryear building in the northwest portion of the show grounds. Its collection includes donated and loaned objects representing equipment once used in agriculture, workshops and everyday household life.
Together, those exhibits place tractors in a broader historical context. Agricultural mechanization did not develop in isolation. Tractors were part of a much larger transformation in rural transportation, manufacturing, trades and domestic life.
Family Activities and Food
The organizers have also built a substantial family program around the machinery.
Children can have their photos taken on an International Harvester 350 tractor near the entrance and visit an activity tent with coloring activities and a scavenger hunt.
Handcrafted-goods vendors and flea market sellers will operate throughout the show, while several food vendors are expected on site, including Jim and Bonnie Plizga’s concession trailer, Sloppy Dawgs gourmet beef hot dogs, plus ice cream and coffee vendors.
Buffet breakfast will be served in the large red building each morning, including Friday as tractors and exhibitors continue arriving at the grounds.
Why This Show Is Worth Watching
The strongest feature of the Trumbull County show is not simply the number of activities packed into three days. It is the way the event keeps old machinery connected to the people and communities that originally used it.
Large agricultural exhibitions increasingly focus on automation, precision guidance, connectivity and machines costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Antique tractor shows occupy the opposite end of the industry, preserving the mechanical simplicity that helped make modern agriculture possible in the first place.
Ford is particularly suited to that story.
The company applied many of the manufacturing principles that transformed the automobile industry to agricultural machinery, helping move tractors toward lower-cost mass production. Fordson production began in 1917, and Ford later returned to the U.S. tractor market with the N-Series before introducing generations of Ford-branded machines that remain common at farm auctions and collector events today.
Seeing those tractors together offers something specification sheets cannot provide: a physical timeline showing how farm machinery evolved from relatively simple mechanical workhorses into the increasingly sophisticated tractors that followed.
Ford Tractor Legacy
Ford’s agricultural machinery history spans much of the 20th century.
The Fordson Model F entered production in 1917, while Ford returned to the U.S. tractor market with its N-Series in 1939. The famous Ford 8N arrived in 1947, with more than 530,000 units ultimately produced, while worldwide Fordson Model F production exceeded 650,000 units.
Ford expanded its agricultural business substantially in 1986 by acquiring Sperry-New Holland and forming Ford-New Holland. It later acquired Versatile in 1988. Ford ultimately sold its tractor business to Fiat in 1991, with the Ford identity gradually disappearing from the tractor line as New Holland became the primary brand.
More than a century after Henry Ford’s early tractor experiments, those machines remain highly visible at antique tractor shows across the United States.
For the Antique Tractor Club of Trumbull County, putting Ford at the center of its 30th anniversary show provides an appropriate link between agricultural history, mechanical preservation and the local collector community.
The club is already looking ahead to August 20 through 22, 2027, when Allis-Chalmers is scheduled to become the next featured tractor brand.
