Thank You for the “Little State Fair”
I hope that readers of this column will forgive me for departing from the usual landscape advice, to share some thoughts about something somewhat different. As I sit down to write this column today, what’s on my mind is the Brown County “Little State Fair”, which just wrapped up yesterday.
For some reason, just thinking about the Fair chokes me up. I grew up in Southern New Jersey, in the family landscape business. New Jersey is called “the Garden State”, particularly because South Jersey is dotted with family farms, but it wasn’t until we moved from New Jersey to Ohio that I came to appreciate farms and farm families.
One reason we moved to southwest Ohio is that we wanted to raise our son Stephen, who was just reaching school age, in a home-based family business. Our model was the family farm, where every family member pitches in to put food on the family table. Our plan was that, by the time our son grew up, he would understand how the world works, and what it takes to earn an honest living, and raise a healthy, goal-directed family.
Southwest Ohio suffered a gut punch when lawyers and politicians ended the tobacco industry. The “buyout” ended generations of tradition that involved family and community in a really hard, dirty, sweaty and sometimes dangerous enterprise. Every step of raising tobacco was just plain backbreaking hard work, involving every family member, with the promise of a check at the very end. This enterprise was the glue that held families and communities together, in good times and bad.
Losing tobacco set people adrift. Entire towns, dependent for generations on tobacco, were hollowed out. I believe that the County Fair, with all the activity leading up to it, is the closest thing we have today to the common purpose that united people and communities before we lost tobacco. I believe this essential character is expressed in the “Little State Fair,” Brown County’s signature event. Steeped in generations of farm and family tradition, carefully orchestrated by a cast of thousands, it’s now the glue that holds Brown County together.
As exciting as the fair has become to the general public, behind the scenes there’s a lot more to this weeklong extravaganza than meets the eye. Like a giant iceberg, the Little State Fair is a juggernaut that moves steadily forward twelve months of the year. The tip of this iceberg is Fair Week, when Brown County schools and businesses hit “pause” and all eyes are on the fairgrounds in Georgetown. For six days starting the fourth Monday in September, a dizzying schedule of events for all ages unfolds with carefully scripted precision.
None of this happens by accident. The atmosphere at the Brown County Fair is one of community and support. Everyone helps everyone. The Little State Fair reaches into every corner of Brown County, into the hearts and minds of everyone it touches, brings out the best in Brown County, and puts that on display for all the world to see.
Walking through the Beef Barn one afternoon last week, surrounded by the smells, sights and sounds of my neighbors and their beloved animals, I found myself overwhelmed. The sheer enormity of how important this tradition is to so many; the goodness, wholesomeness and love it represents, is so fundamentally American. It is a bastion of safety and sanity in an increasingly uncertain world. We all owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who works so hard and so tirelessly to make it happen.
Steve Boehme is a landscape designer/installer specializing in landscape “makeovers”. “Let’s Grow” is published weekly; column archives are online at www.goodseedfarm.com. For more information call GoodSeed Farm Landscapes at (937) 587-7021.