If you turned off Route 360 toward the fairgrounds this third weekend of September expecting the diesel smell of antique tractors and the clang of the horseshoe pit, you'd find an empty field. Field Day of the Past, the antique machinery and heritage festival that has anchored a fall weekend in this county for nearly three decades, isn't here anymore. It packed up and left, and it did so quietly enough that plenty of longtime residents are still planning their September around an event that no longer exists in Amelia.
This isn't the first time the show has moved. It isn't even the strangest part of the story. What's actually interesting is what filled the vacuum, because nobody coordinated it, and the result tells you something true about how a small county's calendar actually works.
Where Field Day of the Past Actually Went
Field Day of the Past has a history of getting displaced. The event, put on by the Rockville-Centerville Steam & Gas Historical Association, lost its original lease years ago and relocated from Goochland County to Redfield Farm in Amelia, a move that let it keep its collection of antique tractors, small engines, and heritage buildings intact under a new roof. For a while, Amelia was home.
That changed again. Public reporting from early 2025 confirmed Dinwiddie County officials were in talks with Field Day of the Past representatives about a relocation out of Amelia, with plans for a one-time trial event that fall followed by a formal application for a permanent site. The trial worked. The 2026 edition is scheduled for September 18 through 20 at Mount Airy Farm on Horsetrail Road in Church Road, squarely in Dinwiddie County, and the organization's own site lists that address as its home base now. Meanwhile, the festival trackers that used to list an Amelia Court House date for the same weekend now mark it canceled.
So the show goes on, just not here. If you've been holding September 18 through 20 open because that's when the county's biggest heritage festival always happens, it's worth knowing the festival itself agrees, it's just doing it from a farm in Dinwiddie County now instead of a field in Amelia.
The Weekend Belongs to the Horse Community Now
Here's the part that makes this more than a story about one event leaving. The exact weekend Field Day of the Past used to claim, September 18 through 20, already had a rival claimant that most people outside Amelia's equestrian circles never noticed: the Amelia Springs Trail Ride in Jetersville.
This is a real event with real logistics. Riders need a current negative Coggins test on file before they arrive. Registration opens months in advance, with an early bird discount for anyone who signs up before March 20. Gates open at 10 a.m. Friday for camping, and unregistered riders aren't allowed entry at all. It's not a casual pop-up. It's a standing tradition in its own right, one that simply happened to occupy the same calendar slot as the county's more famous festival.
With Field Day of the Past gone, that weekend in Amelia now belongs, by default and without any announcement, to trail riders and campers rather than antique tractor collectors. Nobody voted on this. It just happened, because one event left a gap and another event was already there.
October Belongs to Windsor Lavender Farm
If September's identity shifted toward the horse trailer crowd, October has quietly become Windsor Lavender Farm's month. The family behind it moved to Amelia in 2017, planted their first lavender field in 2020, and added a five-variety showcase field in 2023. The property has since grown into a working small farm with a barn store selling farm-made soap and candles, alongside the ducks, chickens, and dwarf goats that round it out.
Most people who've heard of Windsor Lavender Farm know it for June, when the Lavender Festival turns the property into a three-day event with pick-your-own lavender, craft vendors, and live music. Fewer people track its autumn counterpart. The Harvest Festival started in 2023, was already in its second year by the fall of 2024, and this year's edition, confirmed for October 10 on the regional festival calendar, marks its fourth run.
That's two distinct identities for one small farm, a spring destination built around lavender and a fall destination built around harvest, and together they've absorbed a chunk of the seasonal programming that used to belong to the county fairgrounds circuit.
Here's the short version of what actually owns Amelia's fall weekends now:
- September 18-20: Amelia Springs Trail Ride, Jetersville, camping and horse trails, registration required in advance
- October 10: Harvest Festival, Windsor Lavender Farm, Amelia Court House, fourth annual
Neither of these existed to replace Field Day of the Past. They just kept doing what they'd always done, and the calendar rearranged itself around them.
Feeding the Weekend
Whichever event you're building your weekend around, Amelia's dining options have shifted too. Amelia's Kitchen opened on Patrick Henry Highway last September, and a year later it's become one of the county's more talked-about tables, an Italian, steak, and seafood spot serving everything from hand-cut ribeyes to shrimp and crab dip in a county that, by its own diners' admission, doesn't have a long restaurant list to choose from. It's open seven days a week, which makes it the easy answer if you're heading out after a Friday or Saturday event.
The other option worth knowing about runs on a very different schedule. Journey Station Restaurant, tucked inside the Journey Community Center on Patrick Henry Highway, is a nonprofit dining room staffed entirely by volunteers, serving scratch-made southern comfort food Thursday through Saturday. Lunch runs 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. those three days, with dinner added Friday and Saturday from 4:30 to 7:30. Every dollar spent there funds the center's meal programs for people in need, which makes it a rare case where a dinner reservation doubles as a small act of community support. The Friday and Saturday dinner window happens to line up cleanly with the Amelia Springs Trail Ride's camping weekend, if you're looking for a plan that doesn't require driving far.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The lesson isn't that Amelia lost something irreplaceable. It's that the county's fall identity was never really built around one flagship event to begin with, even though it felt that way for years. Take away the biggest name on the calendar and what's left isn't a void, it's the trail riders and the lavender farm and the family-run kitchens that were doing their own thing the whole time, mostly unnoticed because Field Day of the Past was loud enough to dominate the conversation.
If you've lived here long enough to have September muscle memory built around the fairgrounds, this fall is the one to update it. The weekend didn't go away. It just quietly changed hands.
Bradley Real Estate covers the small shifts in Amelia County and the rest of Greater Richmond because staying close to daily life here, not just the market, is part of how we do business. Whether you're weighing a move to this side of the county someday or just want a broker who actually knows what's happening on Patrick Henry Highway, reach out and schedule a consultation whenever the time is right.
