City Kids at the Greene County Youth Fair
I've been to my share of NYC street fairs and carnivals in church parking lots on Long Island, but I've never been anywhere like the Greene County Youth Fair. The mid-summer festival had a Christmas theme, featured a Friday-night visit from Santa Claus, and showcased over a hundred animals, many of their cages decked out with ornaments and tiny stockings. There was even a reindeer made of hay.
Does Saint Nick make regular visits to rural county fairs in the summertime? Or was this a once-in-a-lifetime experience? I have no idea. We missed the Christmas party on Friday but got to check out the tents and tractors and farm animals on Saturday. We loved every minute of it.
We got there at 9am so we could watch the Horsin' Around Show with about 10 other fairground early birds. This semi-private horse show had plenty of high stepping, and even gave the kids a chance to pet the pony at the end.
Horsin' Around at the Greene County Youth Fair
In another area, Olive Branch Equestrian (link) from Saugerties was offering pony rides on a horse that made 2-year-old Ramona seem even tinier than usual. Her face doesn't let on how much she loved it.
Meanwhile, here's Archer, hamming it up with a giant ox. The sign on the pen, which appeared to be written by a child, explained that an ox is "a mature working steer that has to be 4 to 5 years old. If a steer has not been trained to work, he never has the distinction of being a called an ox but remains a steer." Now you know.
And there were SO MANY ADORABLE BUNNIES. According to a sign on his café, this is a 3-year-old Lion Head buck named Dunkin:
And here's a cow with the biggest brown eyes:
And here's a reminder of how weird turkeys look:
And here's a sheep:
If this audio file works, you can hear a conversation Archer had with this loudly bleating goat, its tongue waggling like crazy:
Then there's that moment when you say to yourself, "Are these children's pets? Or are they going to end up on dinner plates? Or do all country pets all end up on dinner plates?"
And then there's that moment when you find the Slush Factory.
