Straw, pumpkins and freshly pressed cider will take over one of the Rogue Valley’s oldest surviving farmsteads this weekend when Hanley Farm opens its gates for two days of harvest traditions rooted in Southern Oregon’s agricultural past.
The Scarecrow & Harvest Festival runs Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 19–20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Hanley Farm in Central Point. Admission is free, bringing families onto 37 acres where barns, gardens and farmland preserve a history reaching back to the Rogue Valley’s earliest agricultural settlements.
At the center of the weekend will be rows of scarecrows assembled by visitors from straw and clothing, continuing a festival tradition that turns the farm grounds into a collection of homemade characters each September. Scarecrow kits are available for $20, or $15 for Southern Oregon Historical Society members. Builders can carry their creations home or leave them at the farm for the People’s Choice competition.
Businesses and retirement communities can also enter the scarecrow competition, adding community entries alongside those created by families and individual visitors.
Elsewhere on the farm, apples will be pressed into cider while children move between pumpkin painting, apple bobbing, paper quilt-square projects and traditional games. The gardens and historic grounds will remain open for self-guided exploration throughout both days.
The harvest activities unfold on land that has been farmed for nearly 170 years.
Michael and Martha Hanley acquired 636 acres at the site in 1857, building an agricultural operation that raised cattle, sheep, hogs and other livestock while producing grain, hay and alfalfa. A barn dating to 1854 remains on the property, its large hand-hewn timbers joined with wooden pegs from an era before modern agricultural construction reached the Rogue Valley.
The Hanley home also carries portions dating to the 1860s, with its principal front section constructed around 1875. Nearby stands the surviving growth of a willow planted by Martha Hanley during the 1860s following the birth of her first son, a tree later recognized as an Oregon Heritage Tree.
The history beneath the farm reaches considerably farther back. Archaeological discoveries on the property, including spear points and grinding bowls, document Native American use of the area before Euro-American settlement. The surrounding oak landscape provided acorns that Indigenous people gathered and processed as part of life in the Rogue Valley.
The farm remained in the Hanley family through succeeding generations. Sisters Mary, Martha and Claire Hanley eventually inherited the property, with Mary becoming its final family resident. Her plans for the land centered on preserving it for public use rather than allowing one of the valley’s early farmsteads to disappear into development.
The remaining 37 acres were donated to the Southern Oregon Historical Society in 1982. Mary Hanley continued living there until her death in 1986, leaving behind a property intended to preserve the agricultural history that had unfolded there for generations.
This weekend, that history will be occupied once again by the sounds and work of harvest season, apples being pressed, pumpkins being painted, children crossing the farmyard and scarecrows standing across fields that were already under cultivation before Oregon had been a state for a decade.
Hanley Farm is located at 1053 Hanley Road in Central Point. Festival activities run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, with free admission both days.