It's State Fair Time

I was thinking the other day about agricultural fairs.  There are county fairs, which are usually very small, with limited exhibits since they are only from one county, and then all the counties contribute to the state fair.  Some state fairs are in the top ten across the country year after year.  The Minnesota State Fair and the Iowa State Fair are always in the top five.  The Texas State Fair usually makes the top ten, and as Texans know, it's huge, lasts for weeks, and has a big college football game as part of it.

Colorado is one of those states which is schizoid.  Half the state is rolling plains dotted with small towns while you can see the ranch and farm land shrinking as the state urbanizes.  It's dry ranching (non-irrigated) and farming, but mostly ranching.  Right at the eastern edge of Colorado is where you find corn, wheat, and don't forget, marijuana cultivation.  The Rocky Mountains explode right down the center of the state, and there's no agriculture in the mountainous terrain. West of the Rockies once you leave the back range foothills tends to be more desert in character, but the very southwestern corner raises dairy cows.

We went to the El Paso County Fair a few weeks ago (see blog), and this past week we decided to take in the Colorado State Fair.  This was not a top ten fair.  We were hard pressed to find five hours of entertainment.  As always, what we were interested in were the 4H kids showing their animals.  While the El Paso County Fair offerred the first annual Cat Show, the state fair stuck with more traditional animals.  We checked out the heifer show as well as the ewe show.  This is my favorite picture from that day

We also took in the Creative Arts Pavillion as well as the Fine Arts Pavillion.  Ironically, we just went to an art gallery in Colorado Springs which had a couple of artists displaying at the Colorado State Fair.  Here's one of them.  

The 'Beehive' by Julia Masterson

No fair is complete without quilts, and the Colorado State Fair had some dandies.  However, I really enjoyed visiting with this quilter who was exhibiting her skills for the enjoyment of the fair goers.

She quilts 10 stitches to the inch, and she was great offerring ideas about assembling
the crazy quilt I've been working on for three years

We did see the weirdest couple of dudes at the Colorado State Fair.  They were guys wearing horse costumes.  No, it's not the guy INSIDE the horse costume; it's two guys riding horse costumes.  Anyway, here's the picture - one picture, 1000 words, well, you know.

I interviewed this pair, and it turns out these guys are frustrated actors (home base California) who wear their 'horses', wander around fairgrounds, take pictures with people, and have a 'horseback' stand up routine.  It turns out State Fair committees contract with these guys, fly them in to the fair locale, pay for hotel rooms and meals, as well as a 'fee'.  These guys follow the 'fair circuit' the same way cowboys follow the 'rodeo circuit'.  What I couldn't figure out was how they took a 'comfort break'.  Do you hitch up your horse and open your fly or what?

It was a superfun day, and I finally figured out why I love fairs.  It was an activity of my family, and included one of the three annual opportunitie in my childhood to eat sugar.  I always went first for the biggest cotton candy I could get, followed by a sugar daddy.  My mother didn't believe children should eat sugar.  There were only a few times a year she relaxed about sugar consumption: Easter, Halloween, and the Tulsa County Fair.  

When I hit my teens, the fair was prime teen territory.  I'm looking at the inch long scar I got after a couple of my jokster 'friends' forced me on to that horrible, horrible ride where they put you in a cage which spins independently while it's being rocketed around in a vertical circle. Oh, I can still remember leaping out of that cage screaming at those two idiots while waving my bloody hand in their faces.   I was so terrified during that carnival ride a metal 'burr' dug into my hand the entire time.  it's a wonder I didn't develop lockjaw. Considering, I still have the scar 50 years later, it was not a trivial cut.  On a better note, my high school steady (not part of the aforementioned group), and I always rode the ferris wheel hoping to get stuck at the top so we could indulge in a little necking action.  Yes, indeed, fair time was prime date time.

So, here are the pictures if you want to see more kids showing animals.  

https://goo.gl/photos/EvPYnawtyXYAAF8d6