Fair time in Town

Living in small town America has it's own little set of endearing traditions. This week the Coschocton County Fair is pretty much all that is being talked about where we live here. It's just over a week jam-packed with events from bull-riding, cake-tasting, pumpkin measuring to animal showing and rough trucking (2011 Fair Schedule). 

We arrived in America just a few weeks before the fair in 2009 and got a big culture shock when we went to see what it's all about! To my Brit friends a fair would just be the fairground rides and an agricultural show would be the animal showing bit possibly with the crafty & cookery bits thrown in. Add then a whole load of music and live events and that gives you an idea of what it's like! One thing that really surprised us was that all the kids get time off school for this week long extravaganza, as they are more than likely taking part in one event or another anyway!

Last year, our second visit to the fair, we knew what to expect and Abigail had her first ride on a carousel and LOVED it!! (Did I mention all the rides are free ... probably another surprise to the Brits ... as it really surprised us!) This year, the 160th Coshocton County Fair, we were looking forward to it and Abigail, now 3, was really excited and as well as walking up and down all the animals barns, you can see she thought the rides were great! 

Another element of the fair is the food ... although we're familiar with burgers and hot dogs there are endless opportunities to buy corndogs, elephant ears, funnel cakes ... and anything deep fried including oreos! While they may sound like the norm to Americans ... we had no idea what they were or what to expect when we bought them. We are now slowly sampling the native 'delicacies' ... but the deep fried theme makes them difficult to stomach more than once every couple of months! One thing that really amused us this year was spotting the chance to buy deep-fried veggies ...  I guess this is the 'healthy' option!

If all goes to plan we will have moved on to another continent and set of traditions by the time the fair comes around next year but if that's delayed I'm sure we'll all enjoy the experience once again in 2012!