Madera District Fair is a must-see

Thursday marks the opening of the Madera District Fair, and for four days, Thursday through Sunday, the fair will be the biggest thing going on in town.

The fair is a happy occasion. Besides offering entertainments galore, it also offers farmers and others chances to show off their work and teach the community about how we feed ourselves.

As you will see on Page A1 of this issue of The Madera Tribune, the meat we eat starts out as live animals.

The animals at our particular fair are 4-H and FFA projects, and were raised from babyhood.

These projects are microcosms of big farms and ranches where meat is raised for butcher shops and super markets.

The young exhibitors take of their animals almost as if they were pets, but the young stock-raisers also are counseled to remember that the animals eventually wind up as food.

Hopefully, those attending the fairs also get the message that animals raised for food aren’t like the animals we keep as companions.

Our fair remains small enough to host art, cooking, sewing and nature exhibits, and to offer venues for local entertainment as well as professional acts.

On the midway, fairgoers can find all kinds of foodstuffs to take care of appetites.

Service clubs that operate booths can make some money — some enough to support most of their charitable giving for a whole year. The fair this year will add a high-tech exhibit, complete with a 3-D printer and charging stations for cell phones and other electronic tools that a lot of us have gotten used to carrying around. Now, the fair is making sure those devices won’t run out of juice in their batteries. The high-tech exhibit will be in the Lumber Town building.

Fair general manager Tom Mitchell and his staff have continued a tradition of working diligently to make positive changes that will benefit fairgoers and workers alike.

Be sure to consult the separate publication on the fair in today’s Madera Tribune for plenty of information on entertainment, event schedules and maps to show you where the events will be held.

One thing you’ll notice right away is that the fair is a bargain. And even the weather promises to be good.

Don’t miss it.