County Fair Starts Today! "A Razzle Dazzle Wingding Starring YOU!"

By Brigid Ehrmantraut

It’s six a.m. and the alarm goes off by your head. Time to haul yourself away from the pillows, throw the jam, jewelry, and knitting in the back of the car and hope you have time to jump in the shower before loading up the guinea pig, catching the chickens, and roping the goats. Now dash for the ferry!

Yes, it’s that time of year again: Time to get ready for the fair!

From the second the 10:40 boat docks in Friday Harbor, the day is filled with filling out cage tags, hunting down extra buckets, strewing hay around stalls, and weighing livestock. Vet check is at 2 p.m., so by then your critters need to be in stalls with tags attached. Still life is judged at 6 p.m. promptly, and you dart over to the arts building, trying to catch a glimpse of how your artwork did.

Back with the animals, large livestock judging commences and kids are asked to rate pigs, ewes, and market goats from best to worst. And then talk about it. Why did hog #2 place higher that hog #1? (“I don’t know; I don’t even show pigs” is not an acceptable answer!)

Just because you have to take a break for dinner someplace in there doesn’t mean you don’t come back. Decorating barns can take half the night or more and often involves getting gored by goats and stapling your own fingers to the wall in the process.

The fair begins bright and early at 9:00 a.m. this morning, Wednesday the 17 of August. Come visit!

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