Having grown up directly across the street from a wonderful county fair, it is amazing to me that there are many in our society who don’t know the first thing about a county fair. Case in point, last week I was talking to a sales executive in New York City. I was telling her of our need to educate the public in the Metro area about county fairs. They have wonderful street festivals but, they really don’t know what a county fair is all about. The young woman informed me that she had been to a county fair so she knew what a county fair was. When questioned further about what county fair she had visited (because I have been to hundreds of them), her reply came quickly, “Oh, I went to a Renaissance Festival once.”
Many events use the name “fair”. There are book fairs and science fairs and street fairs. But, if the event does not showcase agriculture and feature competition in various categories of animal showmanship, domestic and fine arts exhibits, it is not a county fair. Last year at the Dutchess County Fair, we had 1700 individual exhibitors bring to the fair over 10,000 individual entries. Now, that’s a county fair. And I don’t expect anything less this year.
We are in the midst of the celebration of 200 years of agricultural fairs in America, as we know them. Our fair here is the largest six day county fair in the state and probably east of the Mississippi. It is recognized by industry insiders, those who travel to and make their livings at fairs, as one of the bestin the country.
I love the quote, “When the student is ready, the teacher arrives.” As a former Social Studies teacher, I would like to invite especially those who do not know about the wonders of the county fair to mark their calendars for Aug. 23 through 28 and come to Rhinebeck, NY for the Dutchess County Fair. The teacher is waiting!
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