The All-New Bunrab

Week of August 2: Carroll County Fair. We went early to this one - Sunday the 2nd was early in the fair. Some of the animals weren't even there yet, if their judging was later in the week. However, there were more activities on the schedule on Sunday, than on any weekday, so off we went. First thing to note: this fair does NOT have a carnival. If the carnival rides are what you go to fairs for, this one's not for you. Second thing: admission is free all the time; parking is free as long as you arrive before 4 p.m. So the price is certainly right. And from where we live, it's less than half the distance to this fair than to last week's fair, and a very pretty drive it is, too. We got there a few minutes before 11 a.m. - first scheduled activity was for noon, but all the animal barns were open (we had telephoned and checked on that, because the fair website http://www.carrollcountyfair.com/ does not anywhere list what time the "gates" open for the public; it just lists when special events and entertainment are.

When one enters the fair from parking, one is in the vendor area - mostly farm equipment vendors. There was also a mechanical bull ride set up there (with super-easy settings, so no minimum age or size limit other than being able to comprehend the instructions without a parent holding onto you) and a few farm-related, non-equipment booths. And a couple of churches. Anyway, one walks up a ramp to the "midway," the main paved corridor through the fairgrounds, and right in front of one is the first building. This one is actually three long buildings in a row. The left-hand one is the dining hall, which is one of the really nice things about this fair. For one thing, staff had told us on the phone, it's open even for breakfast, so if we had arrived at 8 a.m. Monday to see the rabbit show, we could have eaten breakfast there. We decided to go through the largest, middle building, first. This fair is entirely a 4-H & FFA fair, so all exhibits are by kids - no outside adult entries. There were pieces of restored farm equipment being judged, and lots of furniture, both made and restored/refinished (in fact, the restored/refinished was a very popular category.) Lots of the standard 4-H dioramas. Their theme this year is "Feeding Carroll County in More Ways Than One" along with a sub-theme of "4-H is open to all." By the content of the dioramas and displays, they mean that they are handicapped-friendly; nothing to do with diversity. Carroll County is, if I remember my census bureau stats correctly, the least diverse county in MD, over 90% pasty white, non-Hispanic, non-Asian, non-African-American, non-Pacific Island, etc. And certainly our time spent at the fair bore that out. So 4-H may be open to all there, but all is still going to be pretty homogenous. Anyway, at the end of that building, one could exit out the side and down a few steps to the Poultry Barn, which had a nice assortment of poultry. I love the various Wyandotte Laced, that's such a pretty breed. Some of the silkies, the ones that don't even look like birds. Some impressively sized Orpingtons - that's a large breed. Walking all the way through poultry brought us back to the first end of the first building we had been through, and it was almost noon, so we went into the dining hall for lunch. Now mind you, there was plenty of fair food along the midway. But we had heard about the dining hall and wanted to try it. It's a big, air conditioned hall, seats about 150 at long tables, and has a cafeteria line right in front of the kitchen. (Staff refer to it as the cafeteria, rather than the dining hall.) An $8 platter got us some excellent fried chicken, 2 sides (we both chose corn on the cob and baked potato) and a roll and a drink. They had unsweet iced tea in the big dispensers, as well as sweet tea. Larry reports that the sweet tea had lemon flavor in it, something he's not fond of and that wasn't mentioned on the signs. Other than that, we can say that that was a really good deal, and it's run by the fair - all the proceeds go to supporting the 4-H and FFA, rather than to commercial vendors, and the servers include some of the older kids, as well as a few supervisors. Friendly and chatty people. Given that admission is free and parking is free, if you happen to be in the area, go over and have lunch in the fairgrounds dining hall to support them, why not?

After lunch, we headed down the other end of the grounds, to the Shipley building, the largest one - it contains an arena and is the main livestock barn. What we noticed right off in livestock is that there were a lot more sheep and swine than we'd seen at the first two. Goats are still the most numerous livestock; at least in MD, 4-Hers seem pretty big on goats. But there were a good number of sheep. The swine were mostly asleep; pigs sleep as much as cats do, it seems. Not all the cattle were there yet, but the area for them wasn't that big - goats would be more numerous even were all the cattle stalls filled. When one goes out the far end of the Shiply building, one comes to the Rabbit Building, and since the rabbit show is Monday morning, all the rabbits were being checked in this Sunday afternoon. Really a large bunch of them, biggest we've seen so far, and I think probably at least as big as the rabbit selection at the MoCo fair. I don't like the cages they use - not enough ventilation - but they had a lot of them, and all in good condition, and the building IS air-conditioned, so not going to get as hot as some. We saw a few lionheads, and a couple of Rhinelanders, as well as the usual assorted lops and so on. As I say, looked like it was going to be a large rabbit show. Walking out of that, we came to the truly large farm equipment, the stuff too large for the vendor lot. The stuff that costs in the six digits. That was the largest combination furrower-seeder I have /ever/ seen, and Larry wondered, what farm anywhere around here is big enough to need that big a piece, and who can afford it? It's not like the Midwest where there's miles of corn on one farm.

From there, I hopped a ride back uphill on one of the many "gators" (small  cross between a golf cart and a pick-up truck) and Larry walked up, back to the midway ice cream booth. Where we had a BIG serving of ice cream, better bargain for the money than the Cecil County one, of the same Turkey Hill flavors. We then walked into the last third of the long building, which was the Home Arts stuff, and it was a small selection. Every single jar of canned something had a ribbon - it was a little silly-looking, so many ribbons it nearly obscured the shelves. I'm not sure about that as a teaching tool. And we walked over to the pig races, back in the vendor lot, and watched a couple of those - cute. It turns out that the main motivation/training tool for the pigs is: Oreos. That's right, the pigs love 'em. Then we went back over to Shipley, to watch the pet show - the juniorest division of 4-H is called the Clovers, and they are little kids new to exhibiting, so a general pet show is easy on them. Everyone gets an award and their picture with the King and Queen of the fair. Cute stuff, nothing cuter than a five-year-old hugging her pet chicken for dear life. We could have stayed for more shows after that - there was going to be poultry judging, and then an animals-in-costumes contest - but it was getting quite warm for us. So we took a short-cut across the track/stadium/thing-where-big-outdoor-entertainment-will-be, which was more level ground than going back up the midway, and a last pass through the vendor area to the handicapped parking. It was very easy to spend some 4 hours there, and we would have been happy to spend more time if we weren't getting too hot. If one wanted to buy tickets to the big-name evening entertainment, one could easily arrive shortly before 4 and find several hours of things to do before the show starts. (One could also buy a LOT of kettle corn, from various vendors, though we resisted.) Verdict: the price is right, and if you're in one of the nearby counties, certainly worth a visit, as long as you don't mind the lack of carnival rides.

We went to the animal fair
All the birds and beasts were there

Well, maybe not all, but lots. The Montgomery County fair is a big one, much bigger than Howard County (where I live, and which was back a week and a half ago) and almost as big as the State Fair. In some areas, bigger. Although the State Fair has lots more Home Arts (arts and crafts) it's got a really pitiful rabbit and poultry section, whereas the Monty Cty fair has an entire rabbit barn and an entire poultry barn. Now, I do miss visiting fairs with Steve, who would have looked at every single animal as closely as I do, and talked to every single rabbit, and laughed at every single chicken, but on the other hand, with Steve, I never would have gotten to the Montgomery fair at all - we only went to the State Fair up here. (Back in TX, we didn't make it to the State Fair every year - Dallas is a bit of a hike and hotels are often quite full those weeks - but when we did, of course that's an enormous fair, and some years we went to the Travis County fair, which isn't as interesting animal-wise but certainly had one of the hugest exhibits of new farm equipment I've seen.) And Steve really didn't care about the Home Arts stuff that much, despite that I do all sorts of crafts; it's nice to go through the quilting and knitting and needlepoint with someone who does want to look at it (if not quite as closely as I do).

So we got there shortly after opening, early enough to get one of the closest handicapped parking spots and to have first pick of the rental electric scooters, the availability of which at fairs is one of the great innovations of the 21st century, I think. The one I got was pretty peppy - it did hills surprisingly well compared to some. Not that great a turning circle, but I didn't get horribly stuck anywhere. Today was Senior Citizens Day - discounted admission for those over 62, which Larry took advantage of. One of the neat things about Senior Citizens Day is that lots of the old folks older than us just thought we looked harmless and therefore stopped right next to us at random moments to tell us interesting facts about how the fair was in their day, or to chat about whatever object we were all standing near. It's nice to be able to serve as a harmless ear for people who need to convince other people that they still have something worth saying.

There was a raptor show going on over at the community stage, with some lovely owls, and we stopped by their booth later, too, to peer more closely at the owls. Some interesting information about owl hearing and about owl flying, especially as compared to other raptors. They did have a red-tailed hawk, too.

The rabbit barn was dominated by Dutch, mini-lop, dwarfs, and mini-rex, but there were a couple of multi-colored full-size rex (polka dots in more than one color on white) and one really nice Rhinelander whose ears were a gorgeous tortoiseshell mottle. A couple of Jersey Woolies and an American Fuzzy Lop. And a few Lionheads, which caught Larry's eye. They're still a relatively new breed for showing, and there weren't a lot of them. One Flemish giant, a medium 15-pounder, not terribly big as Flemmies go. There weren't many of the giant breeds at all, that one Flemmie and a couple of NZWs, no Californias and no Checkered Giants (my favorite breed). Checkered Giants seem to do best further north - the Massachusetts state fair always had a good assortment of them when I lived up there. A full-sized angora and a fair couple dozen English lops rounded out the large rabbits. I gotta say, I've never been that fond of the really smushed-in faces of Netherlands Dwarfs of show quality. When we were looking at the Jersey Wooleys I was explaining about spinners who keep them and angoras as pets and then spin their own rabbit yarn.

We made the mistake of going in the "Chilly Mall" (the air-conditioned commercial vendors' building) before we ate lunch, which meant that the pick-your-own-candy booth sucked us in, and we walked through the maze of candy bins and came out with 3/4 of a pound of assorted root beer barrels and Squirrel Nut Zippers and caramels and Atomic Fireballs and so on. Other than that, we didn't spend any money on stuff or souvenirs, just on food, which was, of course, bad for us. Pit beef and sausages for lunch. Hey, at least we avoided corn dogs and fried Oreos. The county fairs have much less fried stuff than the State Fair or the average RenFair - no fried cheese, no fried ice cream, no fried peanut butter... We were too full to try the roasted corn ears and limeade when we got to them.

The Home Arts was, as I said, somewhat smaller than the State Fair, but there were a couple of nice quilts and a spectacular quilted table runner, and quite a few nice cross-stitch pieces. In the knitting and crochet, there were almost no sweaters at all - one women's sweater and a couple of kids' sweaters, that's it. There will be more of those at the State Fair, I'm sure. Some felted pieces that are best described as "interesting." And, there was a spinning exhibition, and sure enough, there was a lady hand-trimming her American Fuzzy Lop, who was mostly hypnotized lying on his back in her lap while she trimmed him. Very relaxed rabbit.

There were not many ducks or turkeys in the poultry barn - just a couple token ones. We saw quite a few sheep and goats being sheared over in the sheep barns, but that's not as funny as watching the rabbits. The only alpacas were the ones in Old MacDonald's Barn for the kids, where there was also one full-grown camel, but no llamas. I guess the camelids aren't as popular in Montgomery County as some places. There was a goat judging going on, and it was interesting watching the kids pose their goats, adjusting their legs a couple inches one way or another. Some nice large horses in the horse barn - a Belgian, a couple American Drafts, and one Clydesdale, and a Percheron who looked a tad small compared to those guys, though Percherons are not a small breed. You can tell I've been to more ag fairs than the average urban dweller; I can tell those apart, as well as being able to spot a Silkie chicken at 100 paces and tell a Barred Plymouth Rock hen from a Laced Wyandotte at 50 paces. I will say I remain as ignorant of cow breeds as ever - I know that Holsteins are the "cow-patterned" white and black ones, and recognize a Brahma, but other than that, I'm just, "oh, there's a brown one, there's a black one." Larry, on the other hand, can tell a Jersey from a Guernsey. His grandad had a farm, and used one of the red brand of tractors - I forget the name of it now, but one of the red ones. Me, I recognize big green, but really don't notice the other brands that much - though when I see the orange Kubota equipment, I can't help but think of kabocha squash, which is a Japanese pumpkin, not an orange one but a pumpkin which makes me think of orange and so... well, maybe that's silly, but I think of them as Japanese Pumpkin equipment.

Anyhoo, around 2:30 the overcast burnt off, the temperature rose 10 degrees in half an hour and I started to worry about sunburn, so we headed back to the midway, ate some fried dough - it ain't a fair if you don't eat fried dough or funnel cakes - and headed home around 3, with Larry a bit tired from doing all the walking and me a bit tired from that last half hour of heat and sun. I feel fairly well Faired.