The Great Dayton Fair!

We LOVE our local county fair - The Great Dayton Fair! It's not the "Dayton County" fair as our county is Armstrong County but the fair is located in the very rural town of Dayton. This is year two of us camping in our little RV next to my sister and her family who have been camping at the Fair for likely 10 years or more! When we tell people that we will be camping at the fair, they assume we are showing animals as most people who camp do show animals. This fair does not have a poultry category so the chickens stay at home. We love our local fair so much that we want to enjoy all of it and not have to make the 45 minute drive home every night then tackle bedtime upon arriving home. Between our niece Brooklynn's, Our Girl's, and my entries (which Homestead Phil of course takes part in!), we submitted 30 exhibits in varying categories of canned items, baked goods, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, as well as items created at the 4H craft camp that the girls attended this summer!

Here's what Fair week and the week before the fair look like for us:

A few weeks before the fair, I start perusing an almost 200 page booklet to decide what items we should submit.

Before the Saturday a week before the fair starts, the official entry form needs to be filled in and submitted.

We trek to the Fair Grounds to reserve our camp site, pay for our wrist bands, pay for the ride all week passes, AND submit the forms.

Grocery shop for ingredients of the proposed baked good submissions.

Wednesday and Thursday before The Fair starts, the baking commences, the lego building is finalized, the craft camp items are gathered, and the eggs are weighed.

On Friday morning, the baked goods are plated. It's decided which of the vegetables we are able to submit vs ones we want to eat! The canned items are retrieved from the basement. The eggs are carefully wiped and placed into the cartons. The craft camp items are given a once over to determine if anything needs any last minute glue!

It's time to load the vehicle! Submissions are accepted only between noon and 7pm!

Exhibitor tags can be picked up earlier in the week but since The Fair is 45 minutes each way, we decide to tag our items at the Fair Grounds. We bring a stapler, scotch tape, a hole punch, a marker, and yarn to attach our appropriate tags! (not my first rodeo, friends!) This garden stone was created at Craft Camp. Imagine that the silver is the plate then you'll see the masterpiece all come together! This is an example of the tag with the yarn showing our heart shaped hole punch :) Without the yarn and the hole punch, I have no idea how we would have attached the tag!

We form an assembly line at the vehicle after picking up our tags.

There's a station for each category. Kids are in one line while I'm in another before going back to the car to tag and retrieve more items!

30 items submitted! Record amount for us!

Then we wait. The building doesn't official open until Monday morning to see what ribbons were earned for each item! Oh the wait!

There's still plenty to keep us occupied as we have to grocery shop for the week, prepare the RV, and load it up!

There are pre-fair events that happen like horse pulls and the like. Our main goal was to have the RV set up with time for relaxation before the crowning of the Dayton Fair Queen which happens on Sunday evening. This event was near to our hearts this year as our niece, Gabi, was handing over her crown to the next Dayton Fair Queen. Gabi's reign of 2017 Dayton Fair Queen came to an end that evening. Brooklynn and Our Girl knew the 2018 Dayton Fair Queen from their time at Craft Camp and were thrilled to be able to say they knew the Queen!

In other news, we were able to get into the Exhibit Hall to get a sneak peek of some of our categories that were already judged! Say, what?! We didn't have to wait until Monday! I'll share the ribbons below. To fill you in, we received ribbons for 20 of our submissions!!

Throughout the week, we enjoyed a concert of Danny Gokey, unlimited rides, plenty of rain, limited fair food, watching our nieces compete with their horse, seeing all of the fair animals, meeting up with friends & family, and of course, showing off our ribbons to anyone who would walk to the Exhibit Hall with us! :) Oh.. and of course the Demolition Derby & the Rodeo! Brooklynn exclaimed "I saw a real life cowboy riding a bull!"

Remember when I offered selfies with Reba The Chicken at the Southern Women's Show? Well.. I met her cousin! Reba The Horse! Of course I took a selfie! (I know you were just thinking "Did Homestead Jenn snap a selfie!?")

Friday night of The Fair, I caught up with my friend Molly and her family. Her husband's family has been involved with the fair FOREVER! His great grandparents had their name on a bench at The Fair for years. The Fair is working on replacing the old benches with new ones and offered the oldest benches to be donated back to the family members. Molly and her family had been walking around The Fair all week to look for the bench that they had no problems finding each year previous but without success. I made it my duty to try to find the bench on Sunday. I gathered up two of my nieces plus Brooklynn, and a few other random horse kids who camped near us. We strategically walked around the ENTIRE fairgrounds to try to find the bench. We were also determined to get our pictures in each of the wooden displays around the fair. It was quite an adventure! I promised ice cream at the end. I'm fairly certain that we walked for more than two hours! The littlest kiddo was 4 or so years old! *blink* The oldest was 14. We had fun! We took one last look at all of our ribbons and by this time, moldy baked goods :P We sadly did not find the bench but we did find ice cream! Molly and family were able to retrieve their bench on Sunday after The Fair. Turns out, it was in rough shape, still covered in cobwebs so it was thought that it wasn't even used this fair! We got a good walk in at the fair and enjoyed ice cream nonetheless!

The girls' ribbons:

Our ribbons:

There are a few items that we hoped to submit that we just ran out of time for. Next year, we are hopeful there is still a Duct Tape contest - make anything out of Duct Tape and submit the creation! I also hope to crochet some over the next 11 months and submit a few of my creations. See you next year, The Great Dayton Fair!