2009 Antrim County Fair
Fairgrounds: Craven Park, Bellaire
August 6-8 (plus the Cowboy Worship Service on Sunday morning)
Last year I wrote about the Fair, and I see that people are hunting that post down now, looking for information. Time to do a new one. Here’s what I said in 2008 that is still true:
The Antrim County Fair is the real deal. There will be a horse show. There will be llama judging, swine judging, and cavies judging. There will be decorated cakes and prizewinning pickles and jams. There will be crocheted and knitted and glued and bespangled items of clothing and home decor. There will be paintings and photographs and digital scrapbooks. You will be amazed and delighted. If you are a Modern Consumer, you will learn something about where your food comes from, and something about the people who grow it for you. If you’re a grower, I don’t need to tell you about the fair. But you will probably learn something, too. See you there.
The 2009 version of the Fair Book is not ready yet, so you’ll have to wait a minute for that. But I can give you the schedule, because Gloria Campbell over at the MSU Extension Service was kind enough to forward the file to me: Antrim County Fair 2009 Schedule of Events (flyer).
There is a lot of new stuff this year, and you can read all about it in the Antrim Review next Thursday, but by the time you get the paper and read it, it’ll be too late to trot over there for the Antrim County Horse Show (8:30 am Thursday, August 6) so I recommend you put that on your calendar now. You wouldn’t want to miss the Talent Contest on Thursday evening, Dan Hall’s songwriting workshop for kids or the Buyers BBQ Cabrito Dinner on Friday, or the Dog Show and the Farm Olympics and the Horse Pull and Michael Lee Seiler’s performance on Saturday, either. And you would not want to miss lunch any day.
This is not the State Fair. No ferris wheel, no barns full of guys selling Amazing Kitchen Implements and vibrating lounge chairs. This is not even a big County Fair. This is a little County Fair—like I said before, the real deal. This is about kids and what they’ve learned in 4-H, and about families working together, and about people who want to pass their wisdom and skills on to another generation. If you bid on some food on the hoof at the 4-H Livestock Auction, you won’t be bidding against corporations. You have a good chance of winning the bid, and when you do, you will walk over to the kid who raised the animal and make arrangements for its slaughter and butchering. Because this fair is above all about realism. I don’t see how you can go wrong.
I took snapshots of my favorite things last year. Here are a few of them. Come and make your own memories in 2009!
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- Handiwork
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- Cake decorating
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- Poultry
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- Watching the Competition
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- Horse Show Judges
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- Horse Show Trophies
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- Waiting to Show
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- Moment of Truth
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- The Test
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- Realism
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- Vinny
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- Vinny Is a Blue-Butt Pig
Torch Lake Views 
flandrumhill
August 1, 2009
We don’t have a fair but we do have a little carnival that begins tomorrow with a Teddy Bears’ Picnic in the community garden.
Some of your events look like a lot of fun. I even wonder if the 4H club is still active in my neck of the woods. All of these activities depend so much on volunteers to coordinate and many have fallen by the wayside in the past couple of decades.
Gerry
August 1, 2009
We’re lucky in Antrim County to have a lot of adults who are committed to making the Fair a good experience for kids. Last year I met a horse show judge who had her first competitive experience at the Antrim County Fair. Now she goes all over the country judging horse shows, but she always comes back here in August, paying a little back. The Michigan State University Extension Service is great, too, and provides a lot of staff support. Not that we couldn’t use more volunteers for 4-H, just like everything else. There’s been a lot of attrition here, too, with the graying of the community. I’m working on the “kids” — the thirty-somethings who have all the energy I misplaced somewhere.
centria
August 2, 2009
Our fair keeps getting smaller and smaller with less folks attending. I think it’s coming up this coming weekend. Since my husband has to cover it for the paper, maybe I’ll have to tag along. But your posting actually had me smiling remembering Craven Park and suddenly wanting to be there.
p.j. grath
August 2, 2009
Cavies? Are there really guinea pigs? Or capybara? I’m probably spelling that last word wrong, but are they raised commercially in Antrim County? You folks are cutting edge over there! Just another reason why we need a car ferry across the Bay….
Gerry
August 2, 2009
I know only what I read in the Antrim County Fair Book, but I have to tell you, things over here are more interesting than they might seem at first blush. Farmers are realists, and whatever can be profitably raised and sold will be. There’s a lot more energy and know-how in Antrim County than anyone has figured out how to tap, but stay tuned . . .
Scott Thomas Photography
August 3, 2009
Fairs are great places to photograph. So much going on from dawn to night. We don’t have a county fair as Syracuse hosts the New York State Fair every year. That’s coming up at the end of this month.