I Remember Ag Progress Days: an Oral History Project

I Remember Ag Progress Days: an Oral History Project, produced by the Friends of the Pasto Agricultural Museum, aims to ensure that the stories of the earliest Ag Progress Days event are captured, and tha the memories of those involved not be lost. Interviews with volunteers, staff, and visitors will attempt to place the many facets of planning, organizing and participating in such a large event in context so that their recollections can inform the past, enrich the present, and provide a glimpse of the future.

"The most wonderful part of the project—collecting interviews, editing video clips, and publishing stories—has been to see how each person has a unique perspective of the event we know as Ag Progress Days." says Rita Graef, Curator of the Museum. 

See the trailer for our this first series here.

This initiative started under work-from-home orders imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our volunteers could not participate in person at the Museum since mid-March, as they usually do a few times each week. Meeting periodically via ZOOM the group developed an outline of the project as each person shared a different and unique story about their own involvement in the earliest Ag Progress Days. One story-teller served as chair of the committee that eventually decided to hold the event at Rock Spring on a permanent basis. Another recalls milking cows on the site when it was an active dairy farm, before being sold to Penn State for agricultural research land. Several other stories have been captured, and we are continuing to record additional interviews for this first series of the project. See and hear all of them here.

If you have stories to share, do so via social media: #agprogressdays @pastoagmuseum, or email the Museum at pastoagmuseum@psu.edu.

Be sure to check out Ag Progress Days, "I Remember Ag Progress Days: Oral History Project," and Research TOURS of the Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center.