Park County Fair
YeeHaw partner, the Park County Fair is here!
No one said every adventure had to be in a foreign country. Take a long weekend and hit the rodeo, stock sale or 4H exhibits and learn a little about our farm community here in Fairplay, Colorado. Plenty of things to do, rides, amusements, rodeo, stock sale and of course, corndogs.
Well, honestly, not a lot to do but it was fun to see the kids work so hard in the competitions and the auction. Ages ranged from about 6 or 7 to 18 years old, and did everything from barrel racing to cleaning and showing livestock, to parading the stock at the auction.
So what does a day entail for the Park County Fair, well you absolutely have to go through the stock barn and pens to see the animals coming up for auction. The 4H’rs are busy cleaning, sweeping, brushing, washing, and checking out who got ribbons and who didn’t, the usual for a stock barn at the fair. Also, there are these things that look like greenish pies all over the ground that we found are not real fun to step in, makes your shoes smell funky. And don’t get close to the llama, they spit.
Lots of hamburger
Even more hamburger
Rabbits and chickens
Didn’t get to ride any of the amusements rides, Collette said I could next year. Actually, there weren’t a lot of people riding the rides, could have been the rain and lightning, who knows.
We decided to watch the barrel racing competition for some of the morning. Not what I expected, the barrels don’t move. Just kidding, I knew that. Barrel racing is mostly young girls riding big horses as fast as they can and then stopping to go around a barrel as fast as they can. Concept sounds easy enough but it really isn’t. Horses have a mind, a small one but they have one, and they sometimes try to use it which doesn’t sit well with the rider. (No pun intended). Anyway, seems it takes about 16 seconds to circle 3 barrels and ride out of the arena. Oh yeah, can’t ride out the arena unless they open the gate. Saw a couple of kids try to run through the gate but that didn’t work.
Making the first turn
Second barrel
Heading out
Next we went to the auction. Little do the animals know but the reason these kids brush and clean them is to make them pretty for the auction.
4H prototype of a reusable sheep-pillow for your bed.
Takes a lot of dedication to raise an animal for the show and even more care and cleaning to sell it for top dollar. That is of course unless your grandparents are in the crowd and want to buy your animal. Price goes up pretty fast and pretty high but who cares, it’s for the college fund.
All the love and attention these animals get brings a tear to your eye until you find out they’re in a package for heading for the freezer the next day. Auction animals are picked up the next day and get a tour of the processing facility. Not much happens after that.
We went back on Sunday to watch the greased pig contest. They didn’t use pigs for some reason, they used sheep and pretty much each team caught one. Best thing about this was the sponsors gave each kid a pig, sheep or cow as a prize. Pretty neat.
Fair was fun, real home-town kind of thing that we enjoyed. Heading out today for Burro Days festival. And they said there’s nothing to do in the mountains!