For Release July 25, 2000

Come To The Fair!

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

As I write this column, it is Monday morning. I have spent parts of the last four days at the fair grounds. By this afternoon, exhibits will be coming in, judging will be taking place and a transformation will have occurred. The noises and sights and sounds will change a normally quiet fairgrounds into a small community through Thursday night. On Thursday night, all the exhibits will be released and by Friday morning a stunninng calm will have returned.

I’ve watched this for nineteen years and it never ceases to amaze me. On the way to work this morning, I stopped by the fairgrounds. Most everything is in place, just waiting for the exhibits to start arriving. I walked through the livestock barn. It was oddly quiet, like a church all decorated for a wedding, just waiting for the bride and groom to arrive. Even though no one else was there, and no animals were even present yet, I could sense the building excitement.

When you come to the Geary County Free Fair you will probably notice that there isn’t a carnival. There aren’t a lot of commercial displays, nor a plethora of food vendors. Maybe if we had a larger fairgrounds we could accomadate all these attractions that many of us expect from a county fair. But the one good thing that comes from this, is that it focuses the attention on the 4-Hers and their projects. That has always been the way the county fair has been in Geary County, going clear back to the first fair in 1925.

Naturally, there are a few things that remain constant from that 1925 fair, and there are a lot of changes from that 1925 fair. You’ll still see exhibitions of livestock, of sewing and cooking. These were all exhibited at those fairs in the 1920’s. But you’ll also see photography, woodworking, rocketry and more. And I’ll bet there weren’t any llama classes in the 1925 county fair!

The 4-H program has a long history of teaching youth project skills that will stay with them all their life. But it also teaches them some very important life skills. Skills that will help them stay in school and learn to be beneficial contributing members of society, wherever they eventually live. The fair is just one opportunity for them to show off the results of what they have learned. The fair is not the end of the 4-H year, nor does every 4-H project have an exhibit at the fair. There are still record books to complete and projects to finish. Then there are the awards applications and getting ready for the start of a new 4-H year in October.

But you’ll find something else when you go to the fair. You’ll find friends, old and new, and maybe even neighbors you haven’t seen in a while. In years gone by, when there weren’t ball games and a hundred other things happening, many families might only make one trip a week into town. So when the county fair rolled around, it was a chance to get together and visit with people from all over the county to see what had gone on. The fair was a county wide gathering with conversations and discussions that would last long into the evening hours.

Now days we have telephones, e-mail and 24 hour news programs. We can find out in an instant what’s happening anywhere in the world. But you can still come out to the fair and find time to sit down with friends and visit. Catch up on who’s kids are where, who has the newest grandkids and who have we lost since the last fair. For a few brief days we are all transported back to a different time and place where the clock slows down, we recognize the value of the 4-Hers skills and we just visit with friends. Come on out to the fair!

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