A Day at the Fair

     Yesterday, my friend Marilyn and I drove out to Springfield, MA, for the Big E. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Big E, it is a very large agricultural fair/carnival. Actually, it is pretty difficult to describe all you can see and do. We always begin at the animal barns. Outside the cow barn there was a cow wash, no I didn't say carwash, I said cow wash.

Speaking of cows, what can you do with 12,000 pounds of milk? Make 6,000 pounds of butter, of course. What do you do then with the 6,000 pound of butter? You turn it into a butter sculpture. The sculpture is in a glass enclosed refrigerated chamber. The sculpture was a work in progress, and it depicts a man sheering a sheep.

     By far the cutest animal at the fair was Evelyn, an eight day old alpaca. I wonder what she must have thought about the thousand of people streaming by watching her? She didn't seem a bit concerned, nor did her mother.

     After the animal  barns, it was on to the various buildings. One was a craft building and another had every product that you have ever seen on infomercials. Each of the New England states has its own building where information, produce, and products from the state are displayed. While you can purchase all kinds of food along the midway, we prefer to buy our  food at the state buildings. It sounds funny, but a huge draw at the Maine building is a fully loaded baked potato. I kid you not. You should see the baked potato line; it's really something! Yes, we each had one; it's a tradition. Since we were there for seven hours,  I later had a lobster roll at the Maine building and a slice of apple pie with cheddar cheese at the Vermont building. We did a tremendous amount of walking, so I told myself that I was burning off the  calories. :-)
     There are ongoing performances on the stages, rides for kids of all ages, places to shop, a parade . . .  you name it, and you can find it at the Big E!