The event started in 1992 as a way to highlight the importance of agriculture and the county’s agricultural heritage.

It started as a partnership with the Roanoke River Antique Engine & Tractor Club and Halifax County Cooperative Extension.

Events Friday, where students visit, start at 9 a.m. and continue through 3 p.m.

(An event brochure is included as a PDF at the end of this story)

On Saturday the event gets underway at 9 a.m. and will run through 4 p.m.

Musical entertainment will be Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. with Gabrielle Long and Aaron Chalker on the main stage from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

From noon to 4 p.m. the Brake Tyme Band performs on the main stage.

The Hammers will perform at various locations on the grounds — starting at 10 a.m. at the Allen Grove Rosenwald School; the main stage from 11 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; the agriculture museum from noon to 12:30 p.m. and the farmhouse from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

There will be food vendors, craft exhibits and demonstrations where visitors can see antique farm machinery and a 1940s sawmill.

Representatives from Historic Halifax will be on hand both days.

Allen Grove Rosenwald School program

On Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Allen Grove Rosenwald School, Claudia Brown, architectural survey coordinator and branch supervisor of the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, will present on Julius Rosenwald and the development of the Rosenwald schools program.

She will focus on schools built in Halifax County and other nearby counties.

Brown, a native of eastern Long Island, is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She is the author or co-author of seven architectural survey publications as well as dozens of National Register nominations.

The Allen Grove Rosenwald School is one of several schools built in Halifax County by Cary Pittman, a prominent African-American farmer and building contractor.

The Allen Grove School as well as other Rosenwald Schools that remain intact in Halifax County and throughout the South, serve as landmarks in the history of African-American education.

Rosenwald, a philanthropist and president of Sears Roebuck and Company, established the Rosenwald Fund in 1917 to improve the quality of public education for African-American children in the rural South.

To encourage collaboration at the local level, the Rosenwald School Program required local communities raise matching funds for school construction projects. Currently, the application to nominate the Allen Grove School to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places is in progress.

In addition, there will also be a display about the Bricks School, located on Highway 301 outside of Enfield.

The Bricks School, which opened in 1895, met the needs of secondary education for African-American students. It grew from a primary school to a junior college.

The program, sponsored by the Halifax County Library System, is free and open to the public.