county fair

I just returned from a looong week at the Eastern Michigan Fair. I am responsible for overseeing the Lapeer County Master Gardener building, where the wonderful volunteers put up a variety of displays and conduct a silent auction and bake sale to raise money for their awards banquet. This year we held a photo contest too.

Our exhibit had a compost display, complete with homemade bins and a worm composting display, we had a garden of tranquility, a victory garden, a medicinal herb garden set up to look like an old doctors office and a rain garden with a display of rain barrels also. Volunteers spent hundreds of hours growing the plants and making the displays.

Our problem in this beautiful building is lack of exposure. All of the buildings holding inside exhibits are at one end of the fairgrounds and all the rides and animals are at the other. Guess which way people tend to go? This year the weather was pretty good until the last day- when it literally rained inches of water on to the fairground. Later that night strong storms blew through and made a mess of the fairgrounds.

I do like the fair for a day or two, but this week long thing is pretty tiring. I really feel for the parents who camp through the whole fair so their kids can show animals. What a long week that must be. On the last day a horse barrel race was still going on through pouring rain and parents were sitting there at ringside drenched to the bone.

People watching is kind of fun. You get to see all kinds at the fair. Some visit us specifically, others just wander through. I talk to a lot of people about gardening and about pets, their lives, you name it. You also get to eat fair food, which is greasy and fattening but so good.

One thing I do not like at fairs is a “birthing” exhibit, which our fair decided to have this year. Farm animals do not like to give birth in front of crowds. It is very stressful to them. Most manage to give birth at night or in the very early morning anyway because they have the ability to delay labor a bit until things are calm. On the farm the animals separate themselves from other animals and people to give birth if they can.

The newborn young are subjected to too much petting, noise and stress at these fairs. They are poked, prodded to get up, blinded by flashing photo lights, and fed inappropriate things. They are often separated from their moms, especially calves, so the moms won’t hurt someone trying to protect them. Yes, I know dairy calves are taken away from mom and often hauled to auctions right away but it doesn’t make it right. Baby chicks hatching behind glass maybe, but leave the other animals home to give birth and through the first week or so of life. Our state fair has vet students on hand to watch the animals but at the small fairs it’s usually 4-H or FFA kids. When things go wrong they may not know what to do.

I don’t know why the Humane Society, with all the things they complain about, doesn’t complain about this. I feel it’s cruel and inhumane to exhibit animals in the last days of pregnancy and also to exhibit newborns.I don't think county fairs need to have birthing exhibits or state fairs either.