A Summer Staple Looks for Different Hooks

County Ag Fairs Adjust to Please A New Audience

The fair isn't all livestock and rides: Lee LeCaptain of St. Cloud, Fla., saws through a log Saturday during a lumberjack demonstration. LeCaptain performs at more than 30 county and state fairs nationwide. (Photos Timothy Jacobsen For The Washington Post)

Opening night at the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair in Gaithersburg last Friday was a study in contrasts.

There was the tent featuring a 7 1/2-foot-long boar weighing 1,000 pounds. There were four piglets racing round a landscaped track in pursuit of an Oreo cookie at the finish line. There was the ubiquitous smell of cattle and the sounds of lambs being bedded down for the night.

But there were also backyard deck merchants, a rabbit barn and a karaoke stage. Jeff Leaman, of Screamin' Leaman LLC in Gaithersburg, demonstrated his new game, Viking King Kubb (that last word is pronounced KOOB), a 1,000-year-old Swedish lawn game that he hopes will become the county's new croquet.

"My wife's Swedish. I played this over there three years ago and couldn't find it in the U.S.," he said. His booth "is a first time ever adventure," he said, an effort to sell, at $40 each, the wooden games he makes.

It's a different county fair these days. As Montgomery, Frederick and other rapidly urbanizing counties turn from farm to bedroom communities, county fair organizers have found that they must adjust or go bust. (Montgomery's fair ends Saturday, while Frederick's is Sept. 17-25.)

The quest has spawned a burst of creativity -- and creative tension -- between farm-oriented folks, who want county fairs to continue as an agricultural event, and suburbanite newcomers, who may not necessarily understand, or be interested in, the fine points of livestock judging.

Gene Walker is a part-time farmer and board vice president of the Montgomery County Agricultural Center Inc., a nonprofit group that stages the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair. He says changes have been "minimal to none" in the fair's 56 years.

"We don't like to change. One of our goals is to educate the public as to how agriculture functions," Walker said. "We don't go at it on the boutique end, that kind of politically correct stuff."

Yet even he acknowledges that accommodating the fair's greater variety of patrons "is a matter of survival. It costs a lot of money to put this on. If we have a year we're not in the red, we're feeling pretty good about it."

As a break-even operation run mostly by volunteers, the fair depends on gate admissions to maintain the fairgrounds and buildings, book entertainment and hire ride and attractions vendors. That has led to a slow, negotiated evolution that has retained the fair's classic elements while introducing a few twists: a monarch butterfly exhibit, technology-oriented shows, pet and backyard livestock competitions and cooperative programs with local schools.

A potential new offering weighing on Walker, who also serves as the Montgomery fair's horse superintendent, is an equestrian show. Not many farmers want their agricultural fair inundated with horse people. But riding horses now outnumber cattle 2-to-1 in Montgomery County. A horse show could draw Maryland's fastest-growing segment of livestock owners, plus plenty of spectators. Even cow-friendly Frederick will introduce a two-day equine exposition at its fair this year.

Walker plans to pursue one, but "let's not talk about that too much," he said.

Montgomery's 59-acre fairgrounds are a rural island in an ever-expanding suburbia. The midway overlooks a Chinese fast-food place and a Borders bookstore. The sound of traffic from Route 355 blends with the sound of livestock.

Riding in a golf cart past the livestock barns, Randy Fox, executive director of the Montgomery fair, explained its newer features: the home-brewed beer competition; a comedy cooking show; sandboxes filled with soybeans and corn for kids to play in; a toilet-decorating contest (most people turn them into planters); and Old MacDonald's Farm, which gives many suburban children their first look at a Brahma bull or a bison. The number of small-animal entries has doubled in the past several years -- the rabbit barn was full this year.