What's happening at the Fair?

How many people attended our Fair this year? After totaling all the figures, we had 3,524 people come through our gates! Hope you enjoyed the entertainment, livestock shows, good food and visiting with friends each day. See you at the 2013 Wahkiakum County Fair!

Did you notice the beautiful roses we have growing in our flower beds during the fair? These roses were selected by Georgie Billings for their beauty and ability to continue to survive in our rainy area. She also loaned the fair many potted plants and placed them around the fairgrounds to brighten up many areas with their colorful flowers. Georgie has a serious interest in keeping the plants we purchase healthy and thriving. She volunteers many hours each month taking care of the hundreds of plants that landscape our fairgrounds. Sometimes it takes three hours just to water all the flower beds! Thank you, Georgie for being a super volunteer!

The big highway banner announcing our fair, has been taken down along with the big wooden sign already! We really appreciate the Wahkiakum PUD crew that handles this for the fair each year. Especially since Esther Gregg mentioned how the high winds we have in our area can damage the sign if it is left up for a long time. Thanks to the PUD crew our banner is rolled up and in storage until next year.

A late thank you to the Wahkiakum County Fire Departments! Every year, about a week before our Fair, all the local fire departments bring their fire trucks and personnel to hose down all the roads in the fairgrounds and also put hundreds of gallons of water onto the dirt in our horse arena. The work they do helps the fairgrounds look clean and keeps the dust under control during our fair. We look forward to the water brigade each year and I think they enjoy practicing some of their skills too!

Fairgrounds handy man Ed Stevens has been working to get everything cleaned up and put away before the seasonal rains show up. Usually this time of year the fairgrounds moves into a slower motion of activity. Not this year, we still have several project to complete before the end of 2012!

The rebuilding we did a few years ago, because of snow and flood water damage, changed the layout of our Fair, mainly the arena and midway. The vendor area was hit by strong winds each day at the tide change this year. We need some ideas on how to divert the wind. If we start exploring new ideas now, we will have time to implement them before our 2013 Fair. If anyone has experience or information about putting slats through a cyclone fence for a wind break please give me a call.

The Fair Board will be fund raising for improvements needed before our next fair. I hope you will support our fund raising events now and in 2013. When you attend the Fair you will be able to see what we did with the money raised at these events. If you would like to be involved in helping the fair board raise funds for the 105th Wahkiakum County Fair, please call. New volunteers and ideas are always welcome.

The fairgrounds is open for limited hours in September. If you need to gain access to the fairgrounds contact manager Becky Ledtke at 560-0371, or you can call 795-3480 and leave a message on the fairgrounds answering machine.

The next Wahkiakum County Fair Board meeting is September 12, 7 p.m., T-Building, at the Fairgrounds in Skamokawa.