Well, that's another state fair in the books! I might use an excessive amount of exclamation points in this post as I am just so, so incredibly happy to have made it though another state fair and returned to the farm.
Not that I don't adore the fair, but to be honest it is an exhausting endeavor. Not only do we move to the fairgrounds for five days, but we also had to move an almost 1500lb animal to the fairgrounds too. The logistics are pretty intense. There's feed and grooming tools, food and extended camping considerations, and let's not get me started on the most complicated aspect of the fair: thousands of people.
The people watching at a fair is pretty splendid though. It's just that when you are showing a massive moo, and have to walk said moo from the cattle barn to a show arena through a sea of people, things can get well, interesting.
But that is a story for a future post! This array of photographic splendor is a showcase of some of what I saw everyday as I wandered about the grounds on my many missions. Some of those missions were super important. Things like walking back to my travel trailer to get the show stick that my daughter needed to show and should have brought with her or told me to bring when I asked her if she needed anything before I walked over type of importance. Yay!
My first view on the first day of fair were these big fellas. The first two nights of the fair had monster truck shows on the schedule. The 4-H camper village is in a chain-linked area right to the left of the arena, so the first two nights of residence had a fantastic sound track of throttle jockeying foot stompers in those monster trucks. I mean, I could hear them over the screeching offspring of my neighbors, so I was impressed.
This booth was about the halfway point on the walk from my travel trailer to the steer barn, and I have to admit I was intrigued by it. It was a flavored rope licorice booth, and by flavors I mean at least 20 of them. Stuff like blue raspberry lemonade and mango. However, they were $5 a rope, and even though they were good-sized rope, that licorice was too rich for my pocket book. Heck, most of the fair food was super costly!
Inflation has definitely struck fair-food land. I mean an ear of corn was $6! $6, good gravy and grits I can buy a couple of bags of corn and a pound of butter for that! Everything had gone up a good 15% in price, and it was already expensive to begin with.
There was one thing I really wanted to at least see, the cotton candy burrito. I mean come on, ice cream rolled in cereal wrapped in a rolled out piece of cotton candy like a burrito, that's just creative right there. One of the kids staying with us was going to buy one, but apparently the machine that made the cotton candy broke, so I guess I will have to seen that blood sugar bomb next year...
The peeps who run and volunteer at our fairgrounds have been busy little bees, and their improvements could be spied everywhere you looked. Instead of lawn between the master gardener's building and the llama building you got this array of gloriousness:
By Thursday morning, after two full days of showing, I really appreciated a serene wander through the pollinator gardens. I am also pretty sure that some of the people working the bee section of that building think I am a loon, but seriously, who could walk by these without stopping for a bit of sniff and admiration time?
Every year for the past 19 years I have been telling myself that I am going to enter my lavender shortbread cookies and my German chocolate cake in the fair. It's strange how work, farming, and children bearing/raising has gotten in the way of that dream. I think since both of my heathens will be driving next year that I might have a chance to finally enter my baked goods. I'm not too sad about it though, as I really just enjoy a good wander and gazing sesh through the culinary arts building.
And no meander through the fairgrounds could be complete with a peek at the produce. I really dig checking out the pumpkins and the dahlias. Dinner plate size flowers and lawn mower size squash are my jam.
I even ran into The Alien, the little pup that hung out with us at the last cattle show we went to. The little beastie ended up being a part of our entourage during a lot of the fair as one of the kids staying with us babysat the diminutive creature.
Later, as I strolled around, I took a shortcut through the draft horse barn, and there I found a not draft horse that perfectly encapsulates my overall look and demeanor today:
After a week of hauling, cleaning, eating, laughing, showing, running, watching fights, dealing with unruly steers, parents, and children, not showering for five days, smelling like the backside of a bovine, and loving (almost) every minute of it, this girl is going to shower, do 443 loads of laundry, and crash happily into my own bed. My next post will be all about the ins and out of showing a steer at the fair, as I would love to tell you all about that massive and very labor intensive process. Until then, good night and peace out home skillets!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's probably needs at least 3 disinfectant wipes taken to it because it's probably at biohazard level nasty iPhone.