Maria headed straight for the animal barns and made friends with a goat, the two communed and cuddled for a bit.

This was the first Washington County Fair I’ve been to in a couple of years, it was good to be back. The Washington County Fair is one of the oldest agricultural fairs in the country, and one of the most popular. It is rich in atmosphere and tradition. The things I love about it are seeing the 4-H kids and their families living in trailers alongside their animals for a week while waiting to show them. I love the roast chicken dinner offered by the Argyle Fire Department as a fund-raiser. I love seeing the kids brush their cows and tuck them in.

It is a place of sensations – smells, sounds, lights, sounds, a feast of sensations, really, thick in atmosphere and feeling.

I love seeing the chicken, swine and poultry exhibits. Families work hard all year to get ribbons at the fair. It is wonderful to see all of the cakes and pies offered to the judges in the domestic arts barn. The farm family trailers line the show booths, hundreds of them gathered each year to show their animals, meet and share their dwindling community, deemed inefficient in the global community by the economists and Washington politicians.

I love seeing people proudly parade their cows, and there is the richest sense of family everywhere. This is, in a sense, the lost America, when the country was devoted in great measure to farming, animals and the land. That world is vanishing, and it is a gift to be able to see it at the county fair here.

I love taking photos at the carnival, although it is a skanky carnival, from the rides to the operators. It is noisy and overwhelming, perfect for kids.

There are also things I do not like about the fair. They sell all kinds of things that have nothing to do with life here – hot tubs,  leather studded jackets, skimobiles.

A lot of people came up to me at the fair to say hello. This is sometimes hard for me, I have met so many people I can’t always remember them or recognize them and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I saw one or two people from my other life, people I did not care to see. I saw many I was very happy to see.

There are three or four places to get good food – mostly made by non-profit organizations like the Lion’s Club or volunteer fire and rescue squads, but the fair is fairly overrun with some of the worst and least healthy and appetizing food anywhere – fried oreos, fried and sugared dough, cheese corn dogs, greasy pizza. The junk food – sold in row after row of carts – is just sleazy. Perhaps I’m sensitive to this issue this year, a few weeks out of open heart surgery, but it just seems wrong to me for this junk to be such a prominent part of a county fair in this beautiful, still agricultural place.

it is painful to see so many morbidly obese people walking down the runways, so many of them very young children eating huge baskets of cheese-covered french fries.

This is especially ironic in a county where there are now so many creative young organic farmers, and county farmers who produce some of the most beautiful and healthy food anywhere – blueberries, corn, spinach, zucchini, squash, melons. None of it is available at the county fair. I wish they would give some ribbons for the farmer’s good work, not just for the farmers with cows. One would think they could squeeze in one or two carts offering the very beautiful products of some of the most interesting farmers in the world, organic and traditional.

Perhaps the appeal of the fair is that it doesn’t really change much. Walking down the big runways, you might not know there is an Internet, you will not hear the self-serving posturing of politicians, the bad news of the world is not rained down up you, the timeless connection between the land, the people, and the animals is evident everywhere, even among the cheesy fries and cotton candy. It is a celebration of the old ways, and of the a time when the young drew upon working animals to show them how to form community and take responsibility.

No one at the Washington County Fair would believe you were serious if you told them it was exploitive slavery for working animals to work. There are cows, mules, draft horses, goats, sheep, pigs and chickens, all working with and for people as they have all through time.

What a pleasure it is to walk among people who understand that.