On Saturday — the last day of the fair — I finally got a chance just to walk around the fair. It was a beautiful day.
As I was walking around, I saw Colors the Clown doing a show for the kids.
Chelsea has changed quite a bit since I was a kid (back in the 20th century?!), but it’s still a rural small town surrounded by farms, so the fair still has a significant focus on farming. Since a farm can be a foreign concept to many kids, it’s valuable to have that focus. Food exists before it’s in the grocery store, and it’s good to get a reminder of that fact every now and again.
Here we have future bacon lounging in one of the barns:
I realize that could also be future ham, but I like bacon more than I like ham.
The next barn had goats.
You might think that’s a conceited animal to go around calling itself Greatest Of All Time, but here’s an important detail: the animals were around long before a conceited professional athlete ruined the name.
That barn also had sheep.
That particular sheep was remarkably sociable. Or maybe it was hungry. Or maybe it was stealing watches and wallets. Would that make it a pickBAAAAAcket?
Speaking of sheep: another barn had sheep shearing demonstrations. I don’t mean there were people protesting the practice of sheep shearing — though I’m sure there are malcontents who would do just that — but rather there was a farmer shearing sheep where people could watch.
That gentleman has been shearing sheep for decades. The process proved to be very efficient, and when he was done he let the kids come up to feel the newly-shorn sheep.
While the kids were admiring the sheep’s new haircut, he explained that the greasy substance they felt on the sheep was lanolin. Or, in the native language of sheep, LAAAAAAAnolin.
If you’d like to see what sheep shearing looks like, here’s a short video: