Fair goes on hiatus

The Windsor County Agricultural Fair, one of the smallest and least commercial summer agricultural fairs in the state, is taking this year off.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20100513/NEWS02/5130384/1003/NEWS02

Published May 13, 2010 in the Rutland Herald

Fair goes on hiatus

By SUSAN SMALLHEER STAFF WRITER

SPRINGFIELD – The Windsor County Agricultural Fair, one of the smallest and least commercial summer agricultural fairs in the state, is taking this year off.

Bob Allen of Reading, longtime president of the fair, said Wednesday that a rash of five resignations from the Board of Directors, who are the key volunteers who plan the fair and do the advance work, made it impossible to put on a fair this July.

Without a doubt, he said, the fair would be back in 2011.

One person lost his regular job, making his future time commitment doubtful, one person was deployed to Afghanistan, and another has a serious illness in the family, he said.

The Windsor County fair has been held at Barlow's Field in the Eureka District of Springfield for more than 30 years, Allen said, putting the figure at either 34 or 35 years.

Before that, the fair was held in Windsor at the state prison farm, and at one time was held at different locations around the county, he said, including Woodstock.

In 1973, the fair was held at the Ascutney Mountain Ski Area in West Windsor, but was postponed a month after the floods of July 4, 1973. The fair was slated to be held July 7 of that year, and instead was held in August.

Allen said the fair is in good financial health and had rebounded from the 2006 fair disaster, when both days of the fair had to be canceled because torrential rains made Barlow's Field impassable.

"We recovered from that disaster very well," Allen said.

The fair features a horse show, several 4-H competitions, sheep shearing demonstrations, ox pulling, pony pulling, tractor pulling, and animal displays of all types and sizes of farm animals.

In recent years, it held talent contests and a Miss Windsor County Agricultural Fair contest in an effort to increase interest.

It has a very small midway and the fair is not open in the evening, unlike most Vermont summer fairs.

Allen said one key board member, Carol Hitchcock, a lieutenant colonel with the Vermont National Guard, was deployed to Afghanistan in December. He said Hitchcock, who was in charge of advertising and press relations, had even been trying to help via e-mail from Afghanistan, working with her husband, who is also a fair director.

Allen said the fair didn't lack for volunteers on the weekend of the fair, but it needed people who would work to plan the fair, volunteering time from January through July.

"January through July, that takes a lot of time too," he said.

Right now, he said, they needed people willing to take on the baking contest, the program book.

"We have plenty of volunteers for the two days of the fair and finances are not a problem," he said.