Fair Time

The Highland County Fair started yesterday. September is the time for fairs, not July. The Clinton County fair has never been the same since they moved it from the first of August to the first of July. Highland and Brown Counties get many times the visitors of early fairs.


The weather was perfect for a county fair or our church festival today. It is 50 degrees and it hasn't been that cool in months.


There were lots of impressive things. They had hundreds and hundreds of youth entries and more crops and vegetables than the senior division of some fairs we judge. They had more tobacco projects than most counties have in corn projects. I was really impressed with the quality and some of those soybeans were heavily podded. Some 4-H families are going to harvest a good crop.


The midway has millions of dollars of farm machinery from four dealers. I haven't seen that anywhere else. They had the best fire department display I have ever seen with 9 departments participating. Each department had many pictures of their work.


The disability school had a good display on their soy diesel fuel project and how many less tons of carbon their buses had emitted into the atmosphere.

The crowd wasn't very large but lots of projects were not in place yet. This is the county where I pulled my first tractor in the early 70's. I beat a Super Stock tractor with a friend's stock Oliver 77 we had tinkered with.


All of this in a county where Extension and Soil and Water is on the outs. The county is broke and cut everything to the bone so they had to put on a tax levy and it failed. Also when we walked in we saw a sign that the Confederate Railroad, demolition derby and Vandell's shows were cancelled. I wonder if they didn't have enough money for the liability insurance?


Ed