The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
So“It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. It is a time of hope. It is a time of despair.” I know Charles Dickens was writing about the French Revolution in the 1700’s, but I think he may have been writing about the future too. It is called “county fair week.”
I love the fair and I dread the fair. Luckily, my dread list is very short compared to my love list. I hate it when everyone is running on fumes of Mt. Dew and adrenalin and it is hard to put on a “happy face”. Add a lack of adequate sleep to the mix and you have one grumpy teenager or parent, depending upon where you’re standing. I think county fair week is actually an emotional petrie dish exploring the mental health of parents and kids. Just add heat and humidity and watch it grow. But it shall pass when the fair gates close and everyone can go back to a “normal” routine.
My love list is long with the usual sentiments of memories gone by and memories made today. I feel like I “grew up” at the county fair and it is like my second home.
But my favorite thing about the fair is picking up with friends in the middle of a continuing conversation. You know the kind of friends I’m talking about. They’re the ones you don’t talk to for months or even years, yet you pick up right where you left off without missing a beat.
There is a group dairy moms who take time to catch up and laugh each year at the fair. The kids aren’t the only ones who love to sit on the show box and talk. Ruth, Christina, Joan, and I lose track of time when we start commiserating, cackling and chuckling. Every time we see each other we start singing ..”it’s the most wonderful time of the year”. We try to remind our selves that the hustle and bustle of the fair is no different than the holiday season and we all seem to pass through that ok. Now if we can just write lyrics to go with the song, we’ll have the entertainment for our DHIA banquet.
Of course county fair week wouldn’t be complete without a few added distractions. Straw is down and ready to bale. The guys just started the third hay cutting for small square bales last night. I think Friday’s job will be stacking straw or hay between the 4-H and Open Shows. First we’ll need to fix the baler. The knuckle busted…AGAIN! I think machinery has an innate sense of survival. It senses when it is on the chopping block and breaks down just enough to be fixed, but expensive enough that you can’t trade it yet.
And it wouldn’t be a complete fair week with out the garden. The boys take vegetable gardening as a 4-H project. That’s great, except you plant for things to ripen just at county fair week. They do well with their projects, it’s just that now I have bushels of beans, carrots and beets to can as well as all their chores to do while they take care of animals at the fairgrounds. Good thing you can snap beans sitting in the stands during the show. The gift of multi-tasking.
It doesn’t matter if you’re at your hometown county fair or the one you married into, county fair week is unique to our universe as 4-H alumni and farmers.. No matter where you go, as long as you can find the lunchstand, exhibit building, machinery hill and the show ring, it’s just like being home.
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As their 4 children pursue dairy careers off the farm, Natalie and Mark are starting a new adventure of milking registered Holsteins just because they like good cows on their Minnesota farm. (Natalie grew up in Stronghurst, the daughter of Becky and the late Larry Dowell.)
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