Local officials judging future of county fairs
Work with show animals not slowed by uncertainty
TARLTON, Ohio – The trip down the long country lane takes some time. Baconator and Brat stop to root in the dirt along the edge of the asphalt until a well-placed poke of a show stick gets them – with grunts and snorts of protest – back on track.
But once sisters Sadie and Savannah Binkley approach the second-to-last crabapple tree from the busy road and turn the pigs around to head back up, the race is on. It takes a minute for them to work up some steam, but as the pigs hit the first bend in the drive, they trot off, their little rumps and curly tails bouncing all the way.
Savannah, 9, and Sadie, 12, can’t stop laughing.
“Don’t they look like dogs?” Savannah asks with a giggle. “They want to get to the water and their pen fast because they think they’re done. But they’re not. We walk ’em back down again.”
The exercise is a ritual for the Binkleys, who got the cross-breed barrows in the same week in March that their Logan Elm district school closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The pigs are the girls’ 4-H projects with their Pickaway Clover Mixers club, and Sadie and Savannah are excited to show them in the ring at the Pickaway County Fair in June.
If there is a fair.
The Pickaway County Fair in Circleville is the earliest in central Ohio each summer, this year scheduled for June 20-27. The fair board has said it will make a decision about the fair’s status in early June.
Across the nation, similar conversations are taking place as fair officials weigh concerns over health and safety. Monday, officials in North Dakota announced they’re calling off the state fair in July that typically draws 300,000 people each year.
In Iowa, some county and regional fairs have been canceled. The CEO of the Iowa State Fair hopes to make a decision on its status by mid-June, according to the Des Moines Register. In the 166 years since the first Iowa State Fair, the only times it hasn’t been held are during the four years of World War II and during the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it also faced competition from the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, a world’s fair in Omaha.
Wisconsin state fair officials say they are considering their options about holding this year’s fair in August, but no decision has been made. Wisconsin is in a cluster of state fairs that share entertainers, amusement attractions and vendors.
Summer fairs at risk
“The survival rate of our county fairs is at great risk.”
Howard Call, of the Ohio Fair Managers Association
Much is at stake for the 94 county and independent fairs that happen across Ohio from June to October each year, both this year and for long-term viability, said Howard Call of the Ohio
Fair Managers Association.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “The survival rate of our county fairs is at great risk.”
So far, the Marion County Fair (June 29-July 4) is the only one to announce a cancellation.
Gov. Mike DeWine has said he wants 4-H and junior fair projects to go on in some manner during fair season. Call said a work group was pulled together last week and was to deliver ideas to the governor on Friday about what some possibilities for what all aspects of fairs might be.
He cautioned, however, that the commercial buildings and livestock barns and 4-H and junior fair projects cost money. The fairs need ticket sales and events to pay the bills, and most county agricultural societies are already hanging on by pennies.
The first fair in Ohio is the Putnam County Fair set to begin June 13. Call said he thinks all summer fairs are at risk, but that maybe the September and October fairs will be able to pull something off.
Call presented suggestions (devised before the governor’s work group was pulled together) to the Ohio Senate’s Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday about how to limit crowds, practice social distancing and provide extra cleaning at county fairs. But then another problem emerged: rides.
Faced with pandemic-wrought budget cuts, the
Ohio Department of Agriculture has laid off 12 ride inspectors. Director Dorothy Pelanda said, though, that the department would bring them back “once it is deemed safe to operate amusement parks and rideoriented events.”
No decision has been announced yet for the granddaddy of them all: the Ohio State Fair, set for July 29Aug. 9.
A family tradition
In Pickaway County, fact-finding is being done as the Binkley girls and their hogs, and many others, wait for direction.
Joy Sharp, the county’s Ohio State University extension educator for 4-H and youth development, said the more than 900 members in the county’s 36 clubs have been holding teleconferences, and the county regularly posts on its Facebook page training videos and lessons and demonstrations to help guide, engage and teach them.
“Our job is to offer support, and that’s what we’re doing,” Sharp said, but added, “I think everybody is concerned about their projects and what’s happening with them.”
For the Binkley sisters, the pandemic’s isolation has meant more time than ever to spend at Reichelderfer Farms, their great-grandparents’ homestead, which has been in their family five generations. The girls leave their own home just around the corner every afternoon and head to feed and care for the hogs.
If there is no fair, they’ll be disappointed.
“I want to know what place I get,” said Savannah, who would be showing next month as a first-year 4Her. “If we don’t get to do it, that would be a bummer because I’m working hard.”
Sadie, who showed lambs the past three years before switching to hogs because Savannah wanted to, agreed. But she said she understands.
“If it’s not going to be good for the community and it will spread germs, then we shouldn’t do it,” she said, earning a smile of pride from her mom, Sarah.
Sarah Binkley’s family has shown livestock at the Pickaway County Fair since, well, forever.
“I just can’t imagine there not being a fair,” said her grandmother, 82-year-old Jean Reichelderfer, as she stood at the back steps of her 19th-century farmhouse and watched her great-granddaughters walk the hogs. “It wouldn’t seem right.”
But aside from disappointments, there are practical concerns if there is no fair or livestock or judging. Like money. Families pour plenty of it into feeding and caring for the animals, hoping to win bragging rights, sure, but also to bring high dollars at a livestock sale.
For the Binkleys, that money raised goes right into an untouchable savings account for the girls’ future. Sadie already has about $4,000 in hers.
For them, though, the fair is about experience and friends, a chance to all be together as a reward for all their hard work.
“4-H and the animals teach you a lot about responsibility,” Sadie said. “But I’d rather not have a fair at all if I’m not going to be able to camp and do everything and have fun.”