CUMMINGTON — The familiar sights of livestock, farming equipment and amusement rides returned to the fairgrounds this past weekend for the 151st Cummington Fair.
Famous for its farm-related shows and exhibits, there were cattle aplenty for children to pet and feed. Early 19th-century farming equipment was displayed only a few yards away from more modern equipment for sale. The 4-H exhibit hall showcased local youth talent through artwork, canned fruits and veggies, baked goods and other crafts.
For Evelyn Culver, the yearly event is a tradition in her family.
“I’ve been here to the fair my entire life,” said Culver, who grew up and lives in Goshen, on Sunday. “All of my children grew up here at the fair, their children, and now it’s a third generation. My great-grandson is here who is just a year old.”
Antique tractors and vintage cars drove through the fairgrounds as part of a parade, one of Culver’s favorite events.
“I always look forward to that,” she said, adding, “The best part of the fair is people enjoying a lot of different things, and there’s something for everyone. It’s like the end of summer and here comes school and this winds everything down.”
The fair drew an estimated 25,000 people over the weekend, according to Karen Rida, an event organizer.
“It’s beautiful fair weather,” said Rida, who is the treasurer for the Hillside Agricultural Society. “It’s been a great fair all four days.”
A fair staple, Jan’s Polish Kitchen, which has appeared at the fair for decades, continued serving the perogies that have drawn people back year after year, and it remains one of Rida’s favorite attractions.
The Chesterfield Fire Department kept its 60-year tradition alive by holding a nickel pitch, where children toss coins into a circle to win candy prizes.
New this year was “Mutts Gone Nuts,” a performance that drew laughter as well as gasps of surprise from audience members. Scott Houghton, his wife, Joan, and their four dogs put on an acrobatic yet very much comic show.
Multiple dogs would jump on a barrel, sometimes with a dog inside, and they would balance and roll the barrel in a coordinated motion. Sometimes, a dog would steal Scott’s hat and refuse to give it back, a gag that had children reeling.
At midday, a horse-pulling event for horses under 3,100 pounds per pair challenged teams of two horses to drag large slabs of concrete across 12 feet.
Donnie Brisbee, of Chesterfield, competed with Bodi, a large black Percheron, and King, a blond Belgian, and easily pulled 2,000 and 4,000 pounds in two different rounds.
On Friday, the two horses had dragged 10,500 pounds across 20 feet, Brisbee said.
Other events throughout the four-day fair included a lumberjack competition, a demolition derby as well as spaghetti, roast beef and turkey dinners.
At an exhibit in a former girls’ dormitory at the fairgrounds, a display by the Hillside Agricultural Society keeps the fair’s history alive.
Jay Blair, a volunteer for the exhibit, said that “When people come in, they can see both the technology of the past but also the story of the fair, which has been going on since 1868.”
The small building displayed lots of commonly used tools from the early 19th century, such as ox shoes, tools for soap making, early chainsaws and ax heads, all which have been donated to the agricultural society from locals.
A poster advertising the Cummington Fair in 1894 shows men and women dressed in their finest attire, some riding bicycles, and people inspecting farm equipment.
“We look back on these fairs as old-fashioned, but this poster from 1894 actually shows a very different perspective,” Blair said. “This shows the fair looking forward; this would be the latest and greatest, the most modern, up-to-date.”
The fairs provided people a look at innovative farming technology on the “cutting edge” in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“That’s what these fairs were about,” Blair said. “It’s only as time has passed that we look at them backwards.”
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com