Three County Fair

Submitting quilts to the Three County Fair earned me a free ticket.  Cool!  My mother came out for the weekend, so we attended the fair on Sunday.

We passed through the agricultural barn first.  Lots of terrific looking fruits and veggies.  This sunflower greeted us on the way out.  Look at the size of it!  Balancing in that tiny pot!  And so many sunflowers.  It was truly impressive (and of course had a blue ribbon hanging from it).


Next up was the art exhibits.  Lots of stuff from some very talented kids - especially photography.  I got a kick out of a blue paper mache llama.  And isn't the little sleeping fox cute?  The cross stitch sampler was by an adult - the light was too dim to get a good photo, but the stitching was wonderful.  It was certainly worthy of best in show.  My mother and I admired a lot of nice sewing and painting (and checked out the ribbons my quilts won).

The next barn was farm equipment.  I got a kick out of this place.  I discovered a contraption called a Sally Saw!  According to wikipedia, it's a precursor to the chain saw.  It was a beast of a machine, that's for sure.

There were some beautiful shiny red tractors in the barn.  I was amused by a pair of them being driven by stuff cows. Dig the sunglasses on this guy!

There was also a table full of old tools with a sign asking people what they thought they were used for (there was one there that no one knew what it did).  My mother identified an old iron used to iron ruffles.

They were running a video on how ice was harvested from the frozen lakes in winter and shipped and stored.  It was still being done in New England into the mid 1950s.

Just outside of that barn was a set of  old engines - grinding corn, pumping water and in general making a hell of a racket.  But these were very cool and still working quite well!

We stopped to watch some of the draft horses pulling logs though an obstacle course, then briefly checked the livestock.  I was amused by a steer getting a blow-dry after being washed.  He was seriously shiny!

It was a good way to spend Sunday afternoon.  Certainly a lot different than the Topsfield Fair.  Less flower arrangements and prize-winning pumpkins.  But more agricultural equipment and more history, which I thought was cool.  I'll have to check out the Big E next.