The Sweet and Secret Influences of Our State and County Fairs

A reminder to come together and celebrate the land

A contestant receives a blue ribbon after showing a hog during competition at the Iowa County Fair on July 13, 2018, in Marengo, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The sawing of crickets and the sight of overgrown gardens, dried-out lawns, and back-to-school sales all signal that summer is drawing to a close. But that very last rose of summer is often the arrival of the county or state fair.

I’ve never entered anything in the state fair myself, but I’ve certainly looked over the various entries that I could have competed against with a critical eye.

“Yes,” I would tell myself as I walked through the vegetable displays at the fair, “my tomatoes definitely look better than those that hold the blue ribbon, although those green beans sure beat mine!” It was the same story at home, as I’d sit back and admire one of my freshly packed pickle jars, convinced that the cucumbers were straight and uniform enough to satisfy any critical state fair judge.

While I was never ambitious enough to enter the fruits of my labor at the fair, I have friends whose children regularly do. Photos of their grand champion and first-place ribbons recently peppered my social media feed, and I got to thinking about the value of state or county fairs.

A picture of an old-fashioned fair can be seen in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book “Farmer Boy.” Written about her husband Almanzo’s childhood on a farm in upstate New York, part of the book describes the Wilder family’s preparation for and attendance at the county fair following the conclusion of the growing season. Three lessons are evident.

Connection With the Land

The Wilders were a family that pulled together to make their farm successful. As such, the children helped with planting, tending, and harvesting the crops, often working on some special project to submit to the county fair.

For Almanzo, that project was the growth of a pumpkin. He and his father set aside a special vine, carefully picking off all blossoms but one. Almanzo then learned some tricks of the farming trade, as he and his father cut slits in the vine, daily feeding it with milk to stimulate growth. The visible result was a prize-winning pumpkin, but the less visible result was that Almanzo grew in his farming skills, gaining a connection with the land as he worked with his father.

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That connection wasn’t a mystical environmentalist experience; rather, it was one that fostered the character and mindset that made America great.

“Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” “whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”

Cultivating the earth, Jefferson explained, builds a natural character that encourages ambition and independence. Manners such as these are those “which preserve a republic in vigour,” he concluded.

Polished Presentation

In addition to Almanzo’s pumpkin, the Wilder children entered other things in the fair, including “jellies and pickles and preserves that Eliza Jane and Alice had made.” These were the fruits of their labors, the demonstration of their ability to produce edible goods from the land.

“To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd,” author Wendell Berry once wrote. The fair gave the Wilder children a goal to aim for—a reward to earn for the best presentation of their harvest. But in the process, they learned the production skills necessary for survival, while also gaining an appreciation for the food set before them and the labor involved, something about which many of us in modern society haven’t got a clue.

But presentation wasn’t limited to the fruits of harvest and handiwork. It also was evidenced in the clothing that the fair’s attendees wore. The whole Wilder family was “dressed up in their Sunday clothes except Mother,” who “wore her second-best and took an apron, for she was going to help with the church dinner.” This well-dressed family was joined by other fairgoers dressed “in their best clothes” despite the dust that prevailed in the streets of the fair.

In other words, these people had respect for themselves, each other, and the gathering that they were attending, and they showed that through their dress.

Compared to today’s fairs—at which the people-watching provides a plethora of tattoos, skimpy clothing, and various other demonstrations of eccentricity—it seems that the people of the 19th century managed to present a more polished appearance, which was likely also a demonstration of the internal character that they sought to practice.

Community Cultivation

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of the fairs in Almanzo’s day was the fact that they brought the community together.

“The crowds were thicker than they had been on Independence Day,” Wilder’s “Farmer Boy” tells us, and “all around the Fair Grounds were acres of wagons and buggies, and people were clustered like flies.”

The bounty of harvest and food turned the affair into a sort of thanksgiving celebration for another year of provision, while the crowds reminded the sometimes-isolated farm families that they weren’t alone in their struggle for survival and success.

Unfortunately, the fair that Almanzo knew is a far cry from many of those we see today, where debauchery seems to take precedence.

But such debauchery doesn’t have to be the fair-going that we and our children experience. Just as my aforementioned friends do with their children, we can turn our state and local fairs into the festivals that the Wilders knew—ones that serve as incentives to get to know the land, to grow our own food, to produce it well, and to come together in thanksgiving and fellowship for the bounty that we have received.