Exhausted though we were when we arrived home from a 5 day vacation on Sunday, there was still more fun to be had. After a few hours of unloading the car, reloading the refrigerator, and lying comatose on the couch, we got up again and headed out to the county fair.
Yolo County is not remarkably grand or influential. We include four cities, in the technical sense, and sport a total population of 168,000. Aside from the university in Davis, the only thing that brings folks here is corn, rice, and tomatoes.
The county fair here is also small. You actually don’t have to pay admission to get in the gate. There is a small but respectable midway, three modest exhibit buildings, a small garden display and a barn, festively labeled “Yolo Bounty”, for local business and groups to put up their displays. There are jams and quilts and paintings, big pumpkins, big pigs, a variety of common snacks sold on a stick. The ladies from the historical society will show you old pictures and antiques in a restored school house, if you can hear them over the music and stomping out in the dirt-floored music stage area just outside, which isn’t likely. Folks in cowboy hats and old-timers in overalls show off their restored 1930s tractor engines and pumps.
In short, what you find at most county fairs, but on a small scale. We walked the whole thing in a hour, including eating a couple of corn dogs (on a stick, naturally) and sharing a fresh squeezed lemonade. The row of pigs and cows had all gone home by Sunday night, so we couldn’t moo or oink at them, but Luke pointed eagerly at the tractor engines puffing away and stared wide-eyed at the midway rides from the safety of his seat on his dad’s shoulders.
We also toured the exhibit buildings to see the local crafts, and eagerly looking around for our own little entries. This is the first year that Shawn or I had entered anything in the fair. It was fun to peak around corners and find a few ribbons tacked to our handiwork. I recognized the names of several friends and neighbors on other tags, and in the photography building, we ran into a man we know from church who was displaying historic photos his father had taken of our town 80 years ago.
The state fair is going on right now just a few miles away in Sacramento. I’ve seen some pretty amazing exhibits there in past years. They have lizards and big fuzzy chickens in addition to livestock, big music acts like Weird Al and huge paddle-boats shaped like swans that swim on an enclosed waterway. It takes an hour to walk from one side of the grounds to the other, let alone to look at everything while you do it. The gardens are splendid and you can find all kinds of food there. There are also gang fights and some pretty gnarly people watching to be had. And they’ll skewer and deep fry any carbon-based life form that gets too close to those booths -- watch your kids.
Our own little fair seems quite humble next to all that. But somehow, I feel like this is a little more like what it’s supposed to be like: meeting neighbors, seeing how your jam weighed in, showing your kid how tractors work.
It’s a small fair, but it’s fair enough.
Now I brag...
My 1850s workdress, apron, and bonnet took a 2nd place in the “Coordinated Outfit” category (I’ll try to photograph that assemble better later) and my Mushroom Shawl took a 1st in “Miscellaneous Crocheted Wearing Apparel.” Hooray, hooray!
Shawn got two first places and one third (note my modeling debut above) and three honorable mentions as well for his photography. Hooray for Shawn.
My friend Ania entered some beautiful smocked dresses for wee little girls and she did very well too. A 1st and a 2nd. Well done, Ania.