Pies, pigs, pickles and plums
It’s a community party at the Taos County fair
Jimmy Dean has a following in Llano Quemado.
He walks around the neighborhood every day with Alexia Martinez, his 10-year-old caretaker who’s preparing the big pig for his debut at the Taos County Fair this weekend (Aug. 23-26).
Martinez is a member of the Outlaw 4-H Club in Llano. This will be her first time showing livestock at the fair. She’s worked hard at it, said her dad Max Martinez.
“This was her first year as a full bonafide 4-H member,” he said. “She gets up every morning at 6:45 a.m. to exercise her pig. They walk around the neighborhood for 20-25 minutes. Every evening she walks him again. People stop in their cars and say ‘we like your pig.’”
“She washes the pig, feeds him,” said her dad, who’s been involved with county fairs and farmers markets in three Northern New Mexico counties for years. “4-H is a good family enrichment program, out of school. She’s learning. We’re learning.”
County fairs are a place where farmers, gardeners, livestock breeders, artisans, bakers and craftspeople of all ages and political persuasions come together for a little friendly competition. Youth are a focus of county fairs, which date back in some counties date to the nation’s founding. This year marks the 44th annual Taos County Fair.
Taos County Extension Agent Tony A. Valdez said while the basic types of competitions and exhibits are the same, the entries vary depending on the participants and the weather, which determines the type of crops. “This year, we’ll probably have a lot of apples,” Valdez said.
The year was marked by drought, but the climate seemed perfect for a bumper apple harvest crop along with apricots, plums and chokecherries from many parts of the county.
Dry years like this one mean gardeners get creative. “They’re doing the best they can with what they have. Hauling water, rainwater harvesting.”
What you aren’t likely to see at the fair this year? Bales of hay. “Most folks trying to hide those this year,” Valdez said with a laugh. “Tucking them away for their animals because of the drought.”
The fair is worth going for visitors just to see what their friends and neighbors have been up to quietly in their spare time in the last year. “We sometimes get a big head of cabbage that’s humongous, flowers that are amazing,” Valdez said, rattling off some of what will be on display. “A lot of artists create extravagant things. We have welding projects that youth and 4-H have done.”
“Anybody can exhibit anything here,” he added. “It’s a real community fair.”
Valdez, Martinez and others have been working on a way to expand the fair beyond the weekend. They’ve been talking to the county for a few years about finding the funds to finish out several thousand feet of a shell on the south end of the arena into a commercial kitchen, classrooms, vendor space and more. Martinez said it would be great to have a place where farmers, gardeners and artisans could have a more yearround farmers market.
Jimmy Dean, meanwhile, is prepping for his big debut.
Max Martinez has been prepping Alexia for what that means. She’ll be auctioning off Jimmy Dean at the Jr. Livestock show Saturday afternoon with the money going to offset the cost of raising him.
And unlike Mim-Mim, the rabbit she raised and auctioned last year, who was given back to her and now is a pet in her bedroom, Jimmy Dean won’t be going back home with her after the fair.
“She’s thinking about what will happen to Jimmy Dean,” her dad said. “I think it is going to be hard on her.”
But her dad, like many people who remain close to the land and local food by raising livestock, sees this as part of life and 4-H as an important experience for his daughter.
“We want to enrich her life now and give her chance to flourish, to work and learn to be a good, productive citizen.”