If it were up to me (it will not ever be, thankfully), I would dedicate the Washington County Fair to the 4-H farm kids, who leave their Facebook pages and smart phones behind for weeks and months at a stretch to keep their fading world alive. It is difficult to even catalog the work involved in bringing a cow or sheep or goat to the county fair, the hours of training, grooming, trimming, leading, brushing, cleaning, hosing and practicing that goes into showing animals here.

Everyone else is mostly a part of commercial America, the fair could no longer survive only as a cow fair, but that is the heart of it, what it is was initially about, and more than anything, I love to go there and watch the kids.

I’m not here to say they are better or worse than any other kids, I don’t do that, that is unfair and judgmental and a disservice to the young. They are great in many different ways, and a gamer online with his team can be as creative and hard-working as any kid in a shower barn at a county fair getting ready to show.

But this world is precious and special and timeless and endangered, and so it is deserving of special attention. These young people are not angels or saints, but they often have character and confidence that is rare. They look you in the eye, shake your hand, ask questions, learn what they can learn.

Their eyes have the glint and gleam of people who know hard work and have the confidence and poise of someone who has dragged a thousand pounds of animal across a ring with their parents and grandparents and neighbors and a thousand strangers watching, and keeping their cool as the cow balks, bolts, lies down, looks away, backs up.

They have been living with their cow, sleeping alongside them, grooming them and leading them for months, now they are all alone, out there with all of it on the line. It is as stirring as any football game or soccer match to me, and a lot more nourishing and exciting than lurking on Facebook or Twitter.

The small family farms do not have long to go, they are all being squeezed to death by corporate farming and government arrogance and incompetence, there is no doubt it is a fading culture. The kids on these farms will  not give it up, they will be at the county fair all night every night, growing and cleaning and hoping, until the very last cow comes home.

I am privileged to take a few photos of them every year, they are heroic to me.