A bunch of kids are running with a bunch of … kids … across a green lawn of the Henderson County Fairgrounds in Henderson Kentucky.
Sometimes smaller goat race participants get dragged along by their goats , but not today. Before the race was the ‘fun show’ where 4H children dress as a costumed team with their goats like cowboys, spidermen or fairies.
While all in fun, Fair Board Vice President Louis Weber said the youth learn a lot from such an activity.
“What the most of them are learning is responsibility, responsibility to care for the animals responsibility to make sure that animals are healthy, they're fed, they're bathed and they're well taken care of,” Weber said. “And plus they learn to work with their animals and get the animals to do what they want them to do.”
And what they wanted them to do aside from dressing up, was take the goats around an obstacle course whether pulled, carried or walked around the arena.
Aside from helping run the event, Weber also demonstrated the goat obstacle course for the crowd, under the direction of emcee, Fair Board Treasurer and 4H Livestock Director Heather Fehd.
The Henderson County Fair is the only local fair spread out over an entire month. The lack of extra volunteers is one reason they don’t do a single action-packed week like most fairs said Weber.
“It was wearing the six or seven of us out. So we decided that we would do a month-long fair starting the first weekend in July. … every weekend we'd have something different here at the fairgrounds. … This past weekend we did the AGDA show, the dairy goat show,” he said. “Then this week here every (day) there'll be livestock show.”
Weber said their rodeo weekends attract riders from across the region, and added that they’ll leave the carnival rides to other popular Henderson events like Holy Name Fall Festival. He said such productions weren’t financially feasible.
Go to hendersoncountyfairinc.com for more information.