09/01/2024
Plans are already underway for the 2025 Washington County Fair but before we get too far along, we want to take a few minutes to thank our exhibitors who submitted 3,479 items and were awarded over $11,000 for their efforts. We need to thank the parents and grandparents for all their hard work to ensure all items were tagged and had a ride to the fair. In addition to the parents and exhibitors, we need to thank our volunteers who put in countless hours, starting with cleanup prior to the fair: some of them checked in crafts, helped with judging, attached ribbons and recorded scores right up into the night. When all those tasks were completed, it was time to sort and display all the entries. This process took many additional hours.
We met with several complaints because we don’t allow pick up until 2 PM on Sunday and we understand this is a nuisance for many of you who are already at the fairgrounds for some other reason, however before 2 PM, we don’t know where all of your items are.
Let me tell you a little about our process, at 9 p.m. Saturday night (or right after the bull riding finishes up), we start gathering items in each section and putting them in order by exhibitor number. We check off every item that was entered and make sure we have everything before adding it to a box, bag or tote. This year it took us until around 3 AM and by 9 o’clock the next morning we were back at it merging items from each division together to make the process easier for you to pick up without things getting left behind. At one point we thought we wouldn’t be done by 2 o’clock but it all came together around 1:30 p.m. We had everything ready to go and received many comments and compliments about how smooth the pick up process went. I don’t think anyone waited over a couple minutes and we kept the lines moving.
