It's fair time in New England. This week Eric and I attended our local... and puny I'm told... County fair. I saw some things new to me and some old favorites too.
It rained on Sunday, opening day, and we were too late to see the harness racing where trotters pull the two wheeled buggies. I think you can place bets on them like the horse races I'm used to in Fresno. The track may have been too wet anyway.
It was, indeed, a smal a-"fair" (pun intended) as you can see by the nearly empty main street. So many of the junk food trailers were closed for weather and lack of customers that I could not find a deep fried twinkie or even the normally ubiquitous corndog! What a bust.
No rides were operating and the only noise was a really bad rock band singing off key. But I still loved it.
Eric started our small eating binge with a huge order of french fries which came with hot cheese-like dip and catsup. Maine is somewhat famous... at least in New England... for potato growing, but the boxes thrown out the trailer back door indicated Idaho as their origin. These were huge specimens, but no picture can convey their true size. If you look closely, you can see that they are half the size of Eric's head.
There were big pumpkins which I'm sure aren't the biggest in the country, since our growing season is so short, but they are pretty big. There were squash the same size as the pumpkins, only they were green and resembled a green pumpkin rather than any squash I ever saw.
I'll leave you with something new... a short video of the ox-pull event. These big guys are pulling 2 tons of concrete. As we walked through the draft animal barn, Eric remarked how this looked like a biblical scene.
The big fair, I'm told, is in Fryeburg an hour from Portland. There they have events like skillet throwing (only for women), and logging events like chopping, chainsawing, and bucking.
For some reason, I've never like fairs - perhaps because deep-fried Twinkies don't tempt me. It is a huge tragedy, however, that you couldn't even find a corn-dog (for breakfast?).I found the oxen fascinating. I admit the question entered my thoughts, "Why?" Our mornings are crisp also but our Redbud and Chinese Pistach are still green and leafy. Picked the last of the tomatoes and cukes, tho.
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