Participating In The County Fair

During the last week of August and the first week of September we have the Washington County Fair in Fayetteville, Ark. It’s the largest fair in Arkansas. We come from the Lincoln FFA chapter.

Our fair has diary and beef cows, diary and meat goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. I’ve shown diary cattle, pigs and hopefully next year, a beef steer. We have the rides like every fair has, but we also have other attractions like a John Deere tractor exhibit, piglet races, carnival games, and tons of food. Another thing that is held to a high standard at our fair is the art exhibits and produce exhibits. We have the Largest Pumpkin and Largest Watermelon awards.

The art section has hundreds of different exhibits made by people as young as 4 or as old as 90. Our fair has one arena that almost every animal uses, except dairy goats. Every species of animal gets a reserve grand and an overall grand champion. Personally I’ve only won reserve grand in diary cattle. Several people from my chapter have won overall grand champion. Our fair even has a policy to where you take your ribbons and cash them in for money. That way you get to keep your ribbons and make a little money. We also have a premium sale that allows you to make up to $1,000 or more on your animal. People will bid on your animal and then pay you whatever amount they bid for. You actually get to keep your animal and the money afterwards. You can either raise your animal for next year or butcher it for meat. The only thing is that you have to do well enough to be able to qualify for the premium sale.