..but I did ride my Wing there.
I attended the Cummington, Ma 157th Annual Country Fair this past Saturday.
For those that may not have had a chance to visit a New England Country Fair, there are many, many small rural towns in all of New England that follow tradition and have a fall fair for the local Farmers and Craftsman, to show off and compete their farm/home grown products and livestock.
I'm sure there other areas of the country that do the same, but probably not with the long runs over decades and not with the density in area. One of the best things about fall is there's a fair going on somewhere close by every weekend in late August and most of September, until the Granddaddy Fair, The Eastern States Exhibition Fair.
They all have the assorted rides, booths of chance and tents selling all kinds of stuff, brought in from who knows where and absolutely have a large selection of not so healthy food. It's awesome.
Amazingly, there's still a good amount of small farms that get into it and the turn out by the public yesterday was huge. The fact is was a gorgeous day helped, I'm sure.
I go to watch the Ox Pulls. Nothing says to me, what old time farming was, than watching those majestic beasts working hard to pull the sled of concrete weights at the command of their "Driver".
I imagine how difficult it must have been, back before machines were available, to use those great teams to pull stumps and clear fields of rocks and boulders. And the best thing grown here is boulders.
I don't know all the details, but the pulls were split in to 3 categories, 2400lb, 3200lb, and over 3200lb.
I got there to see the 4pm 3200lb pull, but didn't stay for the over 3200lb cause I didn't want to ride home after sunset.
Each team gets 3 pulls at each sled weight class. Six teams all together.
This team was the ultimate winner. The Driver was gentle, talking softly, petting the Ox, using his crop very minimally and lightly. You could tell he's put a lot of time into his team and they responded to every soft spoken command he made. His team slowly marched in with grace and style the others didn't have. When one razed it's tail for a donation of fertilizer, he would stop and wait patiently. They would turn and back up at his command without crop work. He truly loves his team and it showed. A real pro.
This Driver could learn a lot from the winner, he was not gentle, used his crop excessively & hard and his team did not respond well to him. It took him several go arounds to get the team to back up for the hook.
This team was middle of the other 2, not as gentle as the winner, but not as rough as the other.
It was as expected, very entertaining to see the teams take their turns, until the one that pulled the most, the farthest, was crowned.
I took all these pictures with my Nikon Coolpic 1000. It's a point and shot camera on steroids. The lens goes from 24 to 3000 mm by button, so no lens swapping.
Below is picture at the 3000mm I took from the same spot as the group picture of the teams. If you look at the black pickup in the group shot, just above it is a brown patch. That's this cow.
Thousands of folks having a great time and I didn't see one multi-colored hair, pin cushion faced citizen.
A good day.
