The Rio Linda High School Knights set up a booth at Tractor Day to teach crafts to elementary school visitors. Photo by Khushi Salgia

RIO LINDA, CA (MPG) - On Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16, Rio Lindans gathered at the Dry Creek Ranch House for the 31st annual Tractor Day, an event hosted by the Rio Linda Elverta Historical Society (RLEHS) featuring attractions such as a vintage tractor show, family activities and vendors. This year’s Tractor Day was held in the memory of Ralph Leland Hants, the director, mechanic and equipment operator of the RLEHS who passed away last year.

Tractor Day was filled with a variety of booths and sights, all of which comprise the unique fingerprint that defines Rio Linda Elverta. The local Girl Scouts chapter, Troop 1565, held a booth to recruit girls from the local area to their troop, which is one of hundreds in the Sacramento area.

“Rio Linda is very much overlooked,” said Cathy Peters, the leader of Troop 1565 for the past 21 years.

The troop has struggled to sell cookies in person since the pandemic, when troops started selling cookies online and in-person sales declined. According to Peters, selling cookies in person teaches girls important social skills and gives them the confidence to talk to strangers, making it a valuable experience for the scouts. Peters said that these activities are important because it “builds them up for the work environment.”

To address this, Peters went around to local businesses negotiating deals to allow the Girl Scouts to sell in front of stores. As a result, the Rio Linda Girl Scouts now have more opportunities to sell cookies in-person. Peters also campaigned for having in-person outdoor meetings during the pandemic to “pull girls away from sitting on their phones.”

Rio Linda Girl Scouts participate in activities such as camping, building farm equipment and taking field trips to the Capitol to learn how the government works, as well as participating in local service projects. According to Peters, the purpose of Girl Scouts is to give girls “empowerment to be who they want to be.”

Another organization present at Tractor Day was the Rio Linda chapter of national non-profit Quilt Trail Project, founded in 2001 by Donna Sue Groves who painted a quilt block with her friends to memorialize her mother who passed away from breast cancer. These quilt-style paintings caught on in popularity and since then, an imaginary “clothesline” of 5,000 barn-quilts have been painted across the Midwest and Canada.

The manager of the Rio Linda Elverta Quilt Trail Project (RLEQTP), Debra Crowe, discovered a barn quilt trail while on a hunting trip in Nebraska, and brought the idea back to her hometown and started her own chapter. Now, RLEQTP is a group of nine people who get together to paint quilt blocks in public spaces around the community. Anyone can join, regardless of their artistic background. They get permission from local businesses and other public places to paint a quilt-style mural that fits the theme. The group painted a lion for the Rio Linda Lions Club and, for the Elverta Market, paintings of different kinds of livestock and farm animals.

“It helps people feel better about their town,” Crowe said on why public art is important.

In addition to the RLEQTP, Tractor Day was filled with all kinds of creative people. Mindful Moment Apothecary, a business run by two sisters, Hillary Rounds and Jessica Fraser, sells handmade soap and jewelry. Fraser makes all-natural soap, skincare and body care products and Rounds makes crystal-based jewelry and keychains as well as pins, notepads and crocheted facial cloths to use with Fraser’s skincare products.

The idea for the skincare business started when Fraser’s daughter was diagnosed with eczema as an infant and was prescribed steroid creams. Believing that this was too harsh for a baby, Fraser decided to make her own all-natural skincare products, which led to starting a business. Rounds has always been into accessorizing, ever since she was in fifth grade but since she could never find jewelry that suited her taste, she decided to make her own and as a result started her own jewelry business. She also commissions custom pieces for those who do cosplay. The two sisters decided to combine their businesses, which led to the creation of Mindful Moment Apothecary, a witchy and spiritual brand with tarot cards and crystals everywhere. 

“Our grandmother grew up in the Great Depression,” said Rounds. 

As a result of their grandmother’s upbringing, Rounds and Fraser were raised to make their own products from scratch rather than buying them. 

Also present at the event was the Sonoma branch of the Early Day Gas Engine & Tractor Association (EDGETA). This national organization, formed in 1957, aims to stimulate interest in collecting, restoring, preserving and exhibiting gasoline and oil engines, gas/diesel and steam tractors, power-driven farm machinery and any other industrial technology of historical value.

Some of the items displayed were a gasoline engine, a water pump and a washing machine that date back to around the 1920s. Karl Righetti, the secretary and newsletter of EDGETA’s Sonoma branch, sourced all these pieces and restored them. When he found them, they were so rusty and tarnished that they didn’t even move, so he polished, painted and engineered them back to health, all without an engineering background.

Righetti is an old-technology enthusiast and taught himself how to fix the machines and get them to look as historically accurate as possible. The serial number on the machine often helps to track it down in historical records and trace it back to what year it was manufactured, Righetti said. He often showcases these pieces at museums or at elementary schools to teach kids about the history of the machines they are used to in daily life.

“It shows where we come from,” Righetti said.