Tioga County Fair

After lunch back at the Aerie, Terry and I decided to go over to the Tioga County Fair.

Tioga County is not one of the most densely populated counties in the state. There are just over 41,000 people residing within its borders approximately 36 per square mile. Outside of Mansfield, a college town, and Wellsboro, the county seat, there are no real towns. Crossroads and villages at those crossroads, yes. Towns? No. (Mansfield and especially Wellsboro make up for the missing urban centers, however. The 1890s weekend in Mansfield celebrates the first college football game to be played at night with activities from Thursday through Sunday. last year, however, they did it without the football game. The university dropped the sport. Rumor has it a smaller, scaled back football program will return. The Dicken's Christmas spectacular held at Wellsboro every Christmas season is a huge gala.) Terry and I smile every time we drive down Main Street in Wellsboro past the movie theater that boast it is the best in the county. Heck, it's the ONLY one in the county.

As you might suspect, there's a lot of agriculture within the county and that's what I expected to see on display.

Today was the first day of the County Fair. We were curious to see what might be on hand. None of the rides were in operation when we got there at 2 PM. They wouldn't start until after 5 PM. We planned to be long gone before that, after all, we had blueberry jam to make.

We wandered around the animal barns admiring the working oxen named Brooks and Dunn as well as photos of their proteges Big and Rich. This Brooks and Dunn would not look good in tight jeans. Hauling timber out of a forest or pulling stumps? They could do that. And they clearly had the muscles to do so.

There were two handsome looking mules in the pen next door. The printout reminded folks that a mule is sired by and ass and born of a horse--and retains the worst qualities of each, but these two looked like they could pull a cart or a plow all day long--if they wanted to.

Sheep of every hue were in abundance. As were goats. There were pigs aplenty as well.

The 4-H kids were all over as well. Some led goats about the show ring and we watched for a while. Others had young heifers and sheep that were getting baths and a combing to look their best for the judges.

One of the buildings held the crafts and Terry was interested in seeing what they had. Lots of quilts and photographs. Some sewing projects and a few beading projects, baskets, etc. Interestingly enough, one of my friends granddaughters (aged 12) had two pieces that won prizes. One was a quilt that I saw her working on with her grandmother and the other was an embroidered horse blanket for grandma's Arabian. Another acquaintance, Gary's wife also had two quilts that won awards. One in particular was very lovely. Gary's son also got a prize for a photo of a House Wren that he submitted. (I looked but didn't see anything of Gary's there.)

No one from Terry's Embroidery Guild entered anything. All said the security at the fair was non-existent and from what we saw today, they were probably correct on that issue.

I was impresed with the number of gardening entries. Fruits and vegetables of all sorts were on display and some looked pretty darn good! There were also flowers on display. Some were cut flower arrangements and others were potted flowers. All loked wonderful.

There were a couple of booths set up for produce. A couple selling maple syrup and its products drew us over to purchase some maple based barbeque sauce will taste good on salmon, and some maple crunchies will be good on vanilla or chocolate ice cream.

There were lots of the usual food booths, wings, dogs, cotton candy, barbeque beef, funnel cakes.... All were jsut starting up and some weren't ready to serve yeet. As a rsult we missed out on our Mr. Sticky walnut sticky bun. (If you haven't had a Mr. Sticky's sticky bun, you've never had a real sticky bun! He's out of Williamsport and is local but if you're every in the area... The Black Swan in Mansfield serves them up. Otherwise you have to go to Williamsport or hope to run into his concession trailer at a fair like this.) We had to settle for a funnel cake instead. You can't go to a county fair and not eat something.

They do have evening programs and shows as well as the usual carnival rides and games. We just werent' going to stick around for them. As it was, we spent a bit over two hours roaming around the animal barns and the display buildings before we headed home to make our own jam.