An Evening at the County Fair — Being the Roberts

“Meet me in St. Louis, Louis,
Meet me at the fair,”

One of our favorite childhood memories is spending an evening at the county fair. We would walk through the exhibits and see the canned goods and custom cakes, admire the handmade quilts, and “wow” over the size of the vegetables. There would be entries of corn stalks and hay.

Then we would walk through all the livestock barns looking at all the unique varieties of chickens and rabbits and the size of the pigs; we would “ooh and aah” over the baby goats and sheep. We would see all the horses and mules and then see the beef cows and dairy cows.

Eventually, we would walk to the midway and eat our favorite snacks like fair fries and funnel cakes and so much more. We would ride some dizzying ride and enjoy watching the fireworks late at night.

So, one of our favorite activities is to take our children to the fair and share some of our favorite memories.

We have visited the county fairs all around the region to find ones that reminded us of our childhood memories; one that celebrates the country life and affirms food and farmers. After searching, we found that one of our local counties has a great fair with lots of handcrafts, 4H, FFA, livestock animals, a midway, and of course fun food.

There is a fantastic mini farm concept where children can pick corn, feed the animals, fish, plant vegetables, and so much more sponsored by one of the local dairies. Our children always love visiting it. At the end is a small petting zoo with lots of pens of livestock animals including chickens and baby pigs. There are Texas Longhorn cows and mini horses as well as baby doll sheep and plenty of goats.

While our kids are very familiar with growing vegetables and cleaning manure out of a barn,

Fair Food is the best part of any visit. There are unique foods and delicious items that can’t be found elsewhere and we like to sample a lot of it! Of course, we always get a funnel cake to share. But, we also share ice cream, BBQ, kettle corn, and more calories than we need.

Long before we had a hobby farm, we used to walk through the fair and look at the livestock and all the vegetables and dream of the day when we could participate. While we don’t have a barn full of livestock (and have no intentions of it) we still love walking through the barns and seeing the cows and pigs and sheep. An evening at the county fair is the perfect highlight of a summer evening.

(Updated 2019)