Final Month at Meade County

As fair week inches closer and closer, we are hurrying up and preparing for its arrival.  In Meade County, our fair week isn’t just a community gathering, it’s a holiday.  We’ve been known around the state as having the best fair, which means we have a reputation to live up to! A lot of people, work, and time goes into running this large of a fair smoothly, and it’s almost a year-round job with all the prep-work.

Every year our local Farm Bureau puts on a breakfast one morning during the week.  This is a time for extension, FFA, and other agriculturally based organizations to make yearly reports and get information out to the public.  For our extension report, the agents in the office wanted a promotional video done, with testimonials from people who had utilized extension and keep coming back.  From each area, FCS, 4-H, and Agriculture, we had two interviewee’s whom we set up a day and time to interview on camera.  Interviews and pictures took up most of mine and Callie’s time the two weeks before fair.

Along with being a filmmaker, the week before fair called for a lot of cleaning.  A couple days during the week prior to our fair, Carole and I spent a lot of time in our 4-H exhibit hall, cleaning out the old and putting up shelves and new decorations.  Seeing as our storage at the fairgrounds is very chaotic and unorganized, I took it upon myself to create a tote system that corresponded with a detailed listing of all supplies, and where they could be found.  Hopefully this will be of great use to our office, and make it easier in fair weeks to come.  I also came up with a new way of taking in exhibits.  In years before, we would take in exhibits using entry sheets that were unorganized and literally thrown in an old worn-out paper folder.  This year, we had brand new binders with three-hole punched entry sheets that were in order of catalog number as well as tabbed for easy finding.  I believe that this system is going to work out much better and create a less stressful fair week!

It is now Monday of the Meade County Fair, exhibits have been judged and arranged, and the videos for the breakfast have been created, finalized, backed up on two computers, and saved on a DVD and USB Drive. Now it’s time for the livestock shows to begin.  Goats and sheep show Monday night, hogs on Tuesday, and cattle show bright and early on Wednesday morning before our annual livestock auction.  As a 4-Her and FFA member, I showed livestock.  Not being in that show ring was very odd for me, but I was extremely thankful not to have that stress on me anymore! Our shows went smoothly, and our auction brought in record sales!  Our Grand Champion Goat brought in 19 dollars a pound!

 

It is now Thursday morning, the day of the annual Farm Bureau Breakfast, and the debut of Callie and I’s video.  Having worked out all technical issues the day before, all that we needed to do was make sure our timing was just right, and that everyone loved our videos!

Here’s a link to the final product! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtLwsPcz_U

Now it’s my last week, and I’m sure I’ll find a few small projects around the office and some small tasks to help prepare for state fair.