our day at the Topsfield faire

I bought discount tickets through the Newburyport Daily news for the Topsfield faire for this year.

I 've been to the faire years ago. I don't remember much except for all the food and farm animals. I do remember that the traffic on route 1 was horrendous.

I hate traffic and I hate crowds however I found out that there would be fancy show pigeons on display there.

I figured if I went the back roads and arrived when the fair first opened I could avoid the nightmarish traffic.

At 9:30am, the backroads (on rte 97) there was zero traffic. We slid right in. It was busy but not grossly crowded, yet.

We made a bee-line straight for the chickens, ducks, turkeys and pigeons. It never ceases to amaze me the different breeds of chickens. I think it is pretty cool that people still involve themselves in taking the time to raise and care for these animals. Most of the show animals on the display were from kids involved in 4-H clubs.I found that to be a very positive sign to see kids interested in this sort of activity.

There were a few pigeons on display. They were healthy, robust and beautiful. I wanted to contact the owners but changed my mind when I found out that the owners were just high school kids. Probably not a good idea in this troubling day and age.

Another reason I wanted to go the faire was to check out who "Mrs. Essex County" was.

I figured next year I would give it a try in entering the contest.

I don't care about winning. I just want to compete.

I think it would be fun and funny. The talent contest is basically a recipe contest. I'm not good at home-style New England recipes even though I've lived here my entire life but I perfected other types of yummy exotic recipes that Ive invented that might be interesting.

I do think I might have a problem in the 'personality" aspect on the contest since I'm not exactly "miss bubbly persona". Regardless, this is something I've always wanted to do since the day I've tried to compete for the title of "miss Hampton beach' about a 100 years ago when my then jealous insecure pud* of a "boyfriend" did everything he could to prevent me from entering.

(I am soooo glad he is out my life for good. Brrrrrrr)

(*definition: pud-short fat stubby penis)

My nice handsome husband thinks it would be a hoot for me to enter. He said to me, "you know. if you win you you'll have to be a judge in the pig races and chicken tossing contests". We both looked at each other and laughed out loud. Forget the Manolo Blahniks, I guess I would have to wear a pair of wellies under my gown.

It was a beautiful day as we walked around, ate frozen chocolate bananas and "people watched".

I bought some wax at the bee keepers display for dry suit zippers and after that, it was time to go home. It was starting to get overwhelmly crowded and I was getting hot and cranky.

All in all it was an pretty entertaining day.