Dyersville’s Summer Farm Toy Show that is held every year on the first weekend in June has been canceled.
Thousands of people usually attend the event and National Farm Toy Museum Director Amanda Schwartz says they will switch to an online show. “We want to promote all things farm toy related and especially support our farm toy vendors who are really missing those toy shows and do a virtual show,” Schwartz says. “And that’s going to be on our Facebook page on June 6th. We are going to have all our vendors put together a little promo for their business.”
You can still purchase the 2020 Summer Farm Toy Show tractors – the 1/16th scale Minneapolis Moline 445 with New Idea Loader and the 1/64th scale White 288 with New Idea Loader. You can order the toy tractors online at nationalfarmtoymuseum.com.
Schwartz says they’ve also decided to make a change for next year’s Summer Farm Toy Show — pushing back the date to June 26th and 27th of 2021. “The board thought this was a good pause, a good time to make some maybe a little more drastic change with our dates. Just with farming — maybe pushing it back might be more beneficial to the event,” she explains.
And she says it will allow them to adjust to any other changes that come next year. Schwartz says the school calendar might be a little different next year and this would help with that. “Just a little more flexibility and change things up,” according to Schwartz. “And then this would also change it to a Saturday and Sunday show as well. A lot of people had to take Friday off to attend, so we are hoping that this way a lot of people can make a weekend of it.”
She encourages every to visit the Virtual Summer Farm Toy Show beginning June 6th. The National Farm Toy Museum in Dyersville remains closed to the public for now.
(By Janelle Tucker, KMCH, Manchester)