Round up a

bunch of antique tractor buffs, add a log cabin and grist

mill, a sampling of crafts and plenty of food and you've

got Inman Farm Heritage Days, opening Friday in the

Fayette County community of Inman, just five miles south

of Fayetteville.

This is the

third annual three-day festival of farm machinery and

farm operations like wheat threshing, gristmill operation

and black-smithing. Last year's event drew about 10,000

visitors and exhibitors from as far away as New York.

Organizers expect more than 200 exhibitors to show off

their tractors this year.

Heritage

Days opens at 9 a.m. Friday and Saturday and closes at

dark. Tractor parade times are noon and 5 p.m. both days.

Sunday's opening will be 1 p.m. Admission and parking are

free.

The

festival is sponsored by Inman United Methodist Church,

the West Georgia Two-Cylinder Club and the North Georgia

Two-Cylinder Club. Activities are on the grounds of the

Minter family farm on Hills Bridge Road, just off Ga.

Highway 92.

This year,

an authentic 1870s log cabin, dismantled at its original

site on New Hope Circle in North Fayette County in

December 1998 and rebuilt at the Minter farm, will be

open to visitors. Jesse Thornton of Union City, who is

related to Felissa Stanley - the man who originally

built the one-room cabin - has spent countless hours

helping to restore it.

The

structure is held together with hickory pegs, which

Thornton has meticulously shaved. Poplar logs have been

cut to replace those that have rotted away. A shiny metal

roof tops the cabin, which originally had wooden

shingles. Inside, the original stone fireplace was

reconstructed next to the small "granny window"

where the family matriarch could peek outside while

staying warm beside the fire.

Wave

Dennison, a Fayetteville artist and craftswoman, will

demonstrate how to make corn shuck dolls inside the

cabin. Quilters will be stitching nearby.

Across the

field, Buddy Rhoades of Fayetteville will display a 1941

model I-4 International tractor, the one his uncle used

to cut the undergrowth around his home in Switzerland,

Fla. in the 1950s. Rhoades recalled the day when he was

just 3 years old and he wedged his hand in a

front-opening on the bright red machine.

He also

remembers when the tractor slipped out of gear and ran

over his uncle, OK Donahoo. "It broke his rib...

liked to killed him," Rhoades said. The tractor was

resurrected from Donahoo's farm last year and brought to

Fayette County, where Rhoades and his buddies restored it

to its shiny red glory.

It will

join similar models in the tractor parade and games this

weekend.

For

information phone 770-461-2840.