Due to the coronavirus, there was some slight terror in our household that the whole fair would be cancelled. But much to all of our relief, it went on with a few extra precautions. We'd never ever entered anything in the fair until we landed in this small town 3 years ago. To be honest, I never even paid attention to the open class entries at fairs until I came here. Now we find it fascinating and can spend several hours walking around inspecting the different talents people have been blessed with! It's provided some great lessons for our children too, especially in the area of doing their absolute best AND being happy for a friend or sibling that places higher then they do. I will say though, Michael and Makayla spent much time pouring over the entry form and ensuring that their items could be placed in different classes and not be judged against each other 🤦♀️😂.
You will start seeing pictures of a house here and there. Since we planned to stay the winter, we began paying rent on the trailer house we found to rent in July. We wanted to stay on the ranch as long as possible but we did do all our canning at the house. Several times we spent the night when severe storms went through as well as doing all our baking for the fair there. One of my next posts will hopefully be pictures of the house since I know some of you are chomping at the bit for it. I've just got to catch it on a good day to take pictures so it looks nice :).
We went a little wild with baking projects but it was so much fun! It required much organization and patience on my part. The first part of that was fun.....the second, well, I'm still working on that. It's perfectly acceptable to bake ahead of time and freeze but I have a hard time doing that so we do all of our baking Wednesday. All entries must be in by 8 pm Wednesday but we've always managed to be done before church. It helps to have pie crust and fillings, icing, and cookie dough mixed up and in the fridge. Like I said, the organization beforehand makes my planning heart happy. And we also did a lot of produce and some flowers so that also needed to be picked Wednesday.
How we all felt after a few hours of baking.
Cappuccino Muffins! These are so yummy!
Makayla's spice cake with caramel frosting.
Michael entered iced AND un-iced gingersnaps.
Sorting produce. I was so thankful Eldon was off and had time to help me pick everything. I didn't realize how hard it is to find unblemished vegetables until this day!
Slowly getting everything packaged up and tagged.
They tell us we can pick up our tags at 3 when the exhibit hall opens for drop off. We then have to fold our name up and tape it so the judges can't see it and fasten it to the proper item. Doing it there, along with multiple other people is chaos. Thankfully, as long as they have them printed in the morning (or even the day before!) they'll give them to you and you can tag at home. We had over 100 items so doing it at home is much easier! The three oldest did the majority of it this year. And of course, there is always mistakes that we have to get fixed and reprinted. This year the photo categories and numbers were all wrong - twice! I finally just started writing the correction on the tag and they were happy with that.
Produce all tagged and ready.
Makayla's marigolds
Emily did a Victorian Bouquet. I'm not sure she understood what Victorian was but ....it was cute!
Makayla's basket bouquet
So Wednesday is drop off day for both open class exhibits and animals then Thursday nearly everything is closed for judging. The soonest we could get in to see how we did was Friday morning at 9. I told the children we should wait until Eldon was off and we could go together that evening and they were completely horrified 😂. We were there at 9 am and spent several hours roaming the grounds and playing. We went back in the evening and it was amusing to see several dads being drug around the exhibit hall by very excited children.
The alpacas were so cute!
The livestocks barns take a very long time to get through. And of course, we need to go every chance we get!
The left is a grand championship and best of division for Michael's oil painting. The right is a best of division for Emily's ink drawing.
Emily had a grand championship and best of division for a collage.
This is how the artwork on paper and photos are displayed. I'm mentally counting and I think ten walls like this?! So yes, you can look a long time and always see something new!
Makayla's best of division and grand championship for her agriculture photo.
Lots of baked goods, canning, and dried food.
The first ribbon Michael found was a grand championship on his bouquet in unusual container. I heard him shriek from across the room and assumed he broke something but nope, he was just so excited! He was determined to use a car part and searched long and hard to find something that would work. An oil filter is certainly unusual!
The venue with stilts and the bubble tower was there again.
It's always a highlight for them!
I didn't mind sitting and watching them play while listening to the Music City Quartet. They did a lot of Country Gospel songs.
Steve the balloon man made shaped balloons (for free!)
Friday night......you can see it's a lot busier!
The Friday night event was jousting again. I didn't know violent sports could be so fun but it's quite entertaining! Of course, their announcer is hilarious and that helps.
Afterwards they invited the kids down to pet their horses and meet the knights. "Use social distancing though." Hmmm.....
Saturday morning parade went right past our house! Several friends rode in it.
Lots of old cars!
Plevna fire department was my favorite-they threw out real chocolate!
The bank was cool too-lots of nickels instead of candy.
There was a sideshow of a Lumberjack competition that was really neat.
Racing to climb the pole and slide down.
Log rolling.
Before Saturday's rodeo the announcer asked all the local sheriffs that were present to pull into the arena. He gave a short but heartfelt talk about how law enforcement was getting a bad rap in many places but as a way for our community to show that we love and support them, we're all going to stand and give them a round of applause. It was certainly the longest, loudest applause we've ever heard at an event and most them were wiping tears until it was over.
The rodeo was just a typical one. Eldon had to work but he still got in on the action since a bull rider broke his leg in the chute and went to see him. In typical cowboy style, he refused the ambulance and had his brother drive him in. Eldon even got an autographed photo so that was a fun souvenir.
The final event of the fair is the Sunday night demolition derby.
I had decided I was NOT going but then they gave away 500 free tickets so.........
It was a whole lot of redneck fun!
We picked up our items Sunday afternoon so Monday was the day to get it all sorted out. It's always fun to put all our items together and take pictures. Blue ribbons are first, red second, and white third. There is also a number of bigger red ones that are best of division and a few huge purple (or lavender) that are grand championship.
Ethan's pile. He worked hard on some of these. Coloring is a huge trial to him so he was proud to have completed 2 pictures. The zucchini was monstrous and won for being the biggest. I thought I had a better picture but cannot find it now.
Emily's crafts and produce. She put in some major time too.
More of Emily's.
Makayla's.
More of Makayla's.
Michael's. You may notice that all the vases are empty-the flowers were long dead by this time.
More of Michael's.
My pile.
My photos. I cannot get it to rotate 🤦♀️.
We did small batches of everything we could since most entries only required 4 (cookies, muffins, cupcakes) but still ended up waaaay to many sweets. We fixed plates for some friends and froze a lot. Last week we finally ate the last of the cookies.
Eldon worked the entire weekend so could only attend evening events with us. That certainly put a damper on it for all of us but we still had a great time. The weather was much nicer this year then the previous two and that sure helped too!
