Fair preparations enter final week

Fair Manager Patty Dursteler and her crew of volunteers have already put in a lot of hours at the fairgrounds in Skamokawa to get ready for the Wahkiakum County Fair next weekend and they still have a lot of work to do before Monday when county residents begin to bring in their entries.

Ken Gomes and his crew have been painting the T building and the stage and volunteers are papering tables and walls. The goat and sheep building has been pressure washed and a couple volunteers are frantically working in the rabbit and poultry barn to get it ready. Susan McLain Kuhn, the office manager, has been weeding in her spare time. Daniel Silverman of Skamokawa Gardens donated five truckloads of flowers and Dursteler has been moving them to hanging pots which will be seen all over the fairgrounds.

"We've had a couple working parties," Dursteler said. "We've had a lot of volunteers. Whoever shows up, we give them a job."

A tour of the Youth Building illustrates the magnitude of the job volunteers have before them each year.

"This building takes a lot of hours," Dursteler said. "It's pretty phenomenal the way it changes. Next Monday you'll never know it looked like this. This building has always amazed me."

The areas in the T Building are all assigned and thus supervisors for each section have an idea of how much room they have and how things will look, but in the youth building, they have no idea what type or number of entries they will get and have to prepare for anything.

"If you get an overload of one thing and not of another," Dursteler said, "you have to be able to set it up."

Volunteers had begun papering the walls on Tuesday.

Next Monday the doors open for still life entries, and on Tuesday they will be accepting baking, gardening and floral entries. Animals will arrive on Wednesday, just in time for opening day on Thursday.

Dursteler's excitement was easy to see.

"I'm excited to see the new facelifts on the T building and the stage," she said. "I'm grateful the County gave us money for that. The painting crew is doing an awesome job. Animal entries are up; everything is up."