The Pembroke Farm and Horse Fair

I heard about the little fair at Pembroke, a tiny village, only about a half hour hour away and decided it might be fun to go there. I imagined buildings full of competing vegetables, pies, and crafts,  and other buildings filled with livestock. I found a list of the events and thought some of them would be interesting.

An old poster I found in the town library

So Saturday morning, I worked a few hours before cleaning up and heading off for the opening at 10:00 A.M. I'd just met a new friend who had volunteered to come help me plant milkweed. Ginnie had lived near Houston many years ago and is a very interesting person.  She invited me to come see her new house - she and her husband have just retired and plan to live in Maine, at least during the summer. So I spent about an hour enjoying looking at the few hundred years old house and hearing about its history and her plans for it.

I had to rush off because I wanted to see the skillet toss.  I was tempted to enter but didn't know the rules and was afraid of injuring my shoulder so far, I might not be able to use it until I have surgery.  But maybe in  two years, when I hope to come back.  About fifteen women competed to through the skillet as far as they could along a line, while making the skillet land as close to the line as possible. The distance away from the line was subtracted from their distance along the line. Last year the winner through the skillet forty-five feet, but the longest distance I saw was thirty-five feet.  I didn't watch the end of the competition.

One of the skillet throws

I got interested in what I thought was a apple bobbing game.  But it turned out to be a cider making operation.

The apples getting washed

Then chopped into pieces

Then the top is screwed down on the pieces to make the cider

Spinning yarn from alpaca fleece

There were several things for children to enjoy.

Rides in a carriage

Or in a train made of barrels

There was a petting zoo - this was by far the cutest animal

I had to stop for a lunch of two ears of corn-on-the-cob, picked the day before and cooked at the fair.

Ah, can anything be better than fresh supersweet corn-on-the-cob

The horse part of the fair consisted of demonstrations of pole bending and barrel racing as well as harness racing.  This was my first time to see Standardbred horses up close.  They all seem very small and dainty and look very much the same.  I went across the track to take the pictures of them so didn't find out who won each heat.

The pole bending demonstrations were mostly by young girls

The races were always of three horses 

This was during a warmup - love the footwork 

Another race view

I also waited to see the pig chase by the little kids but seem to have accidently deleted the little movie I made of it.  But the pen was wet down by two fire trucks so it was pretty messy.

Another interesting demonstration was by a border patrol dog.  He was trained to find both drugs and hidden people. His handler told us that the dog can tell that there are four people he can see in the car plus a hidden person and show where the hidden person is.

The dog shows that a person is hidden in the trunk

I had to go one morning and one afternoon to see all of this.  And the competitions on pickles, pies, crafts?  I don't think they happened.  There was a pet show that I didn't stay for and there was lots of music that I really didn't have time to go listen to, although there were several shows I would have liked to attend.  It was the simplest fair I've ever been to but was quite enjoyable.

I'm STILL planting milkweed.  I planted for four and a half hours this morning and hope to finish the last little bit of the planting around the headquarters building. Then I'll move to planting in the ditch.  I'm quitting this project on Tuesday morning. Then I'll be switching to play time for most of my time left here.