(Host) It’s time for the fairs, and with them a colorful cross-section of people.
Yesterday in our series on “Fair People” we heard from the founder of the Addison County Fair and Field Days.
Today, we look back at the 56th annual Cornish Fair, which is held on the third full weekend in August every year.
We talked with a young woman who told us all about how to show a calf or a heifer.
(Beaudry) “My name is Kirsten Beaudry, Walpole, NH. I’m 13 and live on a farm. This is a dairy 4-H, so we have dairy animals. We do community service, but mainly we work with our cows. I started 4-H four years ago maybe, and tonight we’re getting ready for Fit and Show.
It’s on the fitting of the animal and how the person shows it. The calf named Bailey (moo) we’ve brushed her off so that she’s clean. She’s been washed earlier today and then she got her hooves polished, which is basically like painting your nails clear. So she’s all clean and she’s ready to go in the show ring.
My favorite thing about the fair is, like, having all the people asking questions and like, teaching them something so that they know more when they leave than when they came – so they know where their food is coming from.
My heifer’s a spring yearling so she’s a year older than Bailey. She’s really big. She likes to push me around, ’cause she knows she’s big, and she’s sometimes friendly when she feels like it and sometimes sweet when she doesn’t want to be pushy, but, yeah, she’s really nice and she likes to be patted, and I think she likes coming to the fair too.
She likes the change of scenery as opposed to being in the barn with all the other cows all the time. She gets pampered. She gets patted. She gets brushed and clipped and touched and handled all the time. I won one year in Fit and Show with my heifer. I guess we were just like the cleanest. We went together the best. And I’ve won in Type classes, which is on confirmation. And that was fun. It was neat to win for once, rather than being closer to the bottom, which I’ve been before too.
We go to Cheshire Fair. And we went to the Deerfield Fair last year. And I think we’re going to go to Hopkinton this year. The atmosphere here is a little bit different. It’s more about the agriculture than the rest of it. I like that.”
(Host) That was Kirsten Beaudry of Walpole, New Hampshire at the Cornish Fair. This installment of “Fair People” was produced by VPR’s Betty Smith.