By BECKY NELSON
Bramblings
I missed one of my favorite summertime pastimes last week. I enjoy browsing the booths at the annual League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s Fair held at Mount Sunapee. The talent, time, creativity and beauty created by the craftsmen and craftswomen always amaze me. When I have time, which is rare, I love to create. I have dabbled in photography and creating prints and cards with the photos. I have dabbled in oil, acrylic and watercolor paints. I have created some funky jewelry. I love working with my hands and my eyes, and crafts and art are a wonderful outlet and a stress-reliever.
The Cornish Fair is now underway, and I exhibited a few items in the flower show, which is another place I enjoy creating. Alongside the cabbage, kale and melons, I planted a bunch of sunflowers. I have a few perennial flowers around the homestead as well, enjoying a different splash of color all year long as different flowers display their beauty. I only exhibited a couple of photos this year, usually sorting through the camera and picking a spectacular photo or two to show off at the fair, but time slipped away from me this year, and I ran out of time.
Today is day two of the three-day fair, and the fair is a wonderful place to take the family for some fun. Fair food like sausage hoagies and lemonade with a side of French fries and fried dough are an annual indulgence that does nothing for your digestive tract, but lends a complementary treat to watching woodsmen competitions, tractor pulls or pony and oxen pulls or music or talent competitions on stage. The fair is a fun place to exhibit all sorts of personal pride items. If you are a quilter, a special exhibit is arranged for you to show your quilts. Amateur photographers, artists, woodworkers, fabric creators and any manner of hobbyists can display their work both to be judged and to be enjoyed by fair-goers who wander through the exhibit all weekend long. Other nooks around the fairground hold honey and maple displays, a vegetable show, an art show, a farming museum and sale and a bingo tent.
Young exhibitors from local 4-H clubs also show their extraordinary works at the fair, and it is amazing to see how creative and with what skill our youngsters can create clothing, rockets, displays and crafts while learning to be outstanding leaders and adults. Wander to the animal section of the fair and get another treat as you can visit with a cow or a lamb or a rabbit or chicken, and talk to the farmer or 4-H exhibitor-owner about the hard work and joys of raising their animals and making a living off the land. This is a special source of pride at the Cornish Fair, which is touted as one of the oldest agricultural fairs still in existence. With the disappearance of many farms from the landscape, the face of the fairs has changed, with fewer agricultural exhibits and more “honky tonk” as my husband describes the midway rides and booths.
We have always been involved at the Cornish Fair, even before we were married, showing cattle with my husband’s family. When our kids became involved in 4-H, we began our fair week preparing their show cows with them, gathering all the materials for a four-day stretch of camping and tending their animals, and also began showing vegetables and some of our photography and artworks in the open show while they displayed their 4-H project work in their show. The bittersweet moment of the fair is on Sunday night as all the exhibitors pack up and head home for another year.
The bittersweet reality of the Cornish Fair is the harbinger of Fall … schools will back in session soon, teachers are madly preparing curriculum and plans and décor in their classrooms, bus drivers are learning their routes, soccer, football and field hockey players are attending pre-season practices and maintenance folks are waxing and cleaning and performing last-minute maintenance in preparation for students. We farmers are still in full-on summer mode, however. The crops are still cranking out produce, there is still hay to make, and the hard work of the summer months chugs along at least through September. But we already started to pick apples, another hint that our very short summer is almost over. So for today, enjoy summer and go to the fair!
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