| AUGUST 10, 2012 -- Flowers, vegetables and crafts are all very nice, but it’s hard to compete with bunnies. Mary Mingo’s rabbits drew a delighted crowd at the Aug. 4 Norwich Grange Fair, as she pulled them from their prize-ribbon-adorned cages to allow children and adults to pet and hold them.
“They’re great pets for kids,” Mingo said. “You can put them [in a hutch] behind the garage and not know they’re there. They don’t bark. They don’t bite. They don’t need a rabies shot.”
Among the varieties Mingo had on display were a sizeable (10.5-pound) English lop and a pair of Hutots, a mother and her kit (baby). “See those veins in their ears? That’s where I put water on them. It keeps them cool,” she said.
With the temperature toping 95 degrees, “cool” was hard to come by at the one-day agricultural fair, but the agricultural products on display were unfazed. Vivid arrangements of flowers, including wild flowers and prize garden specimens, sported their blue, red or yellow ribbons. Jewel-colored jams in their jars, children’s arts and crafts, photographs and snapshots, and needlework were all on display.
Longtime members of Grange #172 P of H (Patrons of Husbandry) recalled bygone years when family farms, not parking lots, surrounded the Grange Hall, which had formerly been an elementary school. “All this area was a field” before the interstate was constructed, said Grange Treasurer Art Tylenda. While the Grange started out as a farmer’s organization, it’s now “a community organization with agricultural roots,” he said. “Anybody whatsoever can join the Grange and be a participant.” Currently the local grange has just over 60 active members, he said.
Entry into the fair’s juried exhibition classes was open to the public as well, he said. You didn’t have to be a Grange member to see how your homemade bread, dill pickles or crocheted afghan stacked up against the others on display. “We still give monetary prizes as well as the ribbons,” Tylenda said.
Salena McCloud, of Lisbon, brought in a number of her school projects and harvested a mass of ribbons. Among her projects on display were paintings and a coiled clay basket made in art class at Lisbon Central School, a Lego model entered as a 3-D sculpture, and a map of the state of Illinois showing the state’s regional agricultural products. Her dad, Jim McCloud, a 4-H leader at the Groton Sub Base, said that Salena has also exhibited some of her projects with the Franklin Variety 4-H Club.
The Norwich Grange has held its annual one-day fair since 1934, said Grange chaplain Dick Tarryk. “Back then there were a lot of family farms around here. We used to award prizes of 50 cents or 25 cents for exhibits,” he said. “That was good money in ’34. We missed one or two years for the [Second World] War and we missed some in the 2000s.”
Among the other attractions at the fair were a kids’ fishing pond for prizes, local craft vendors, a lunch counter and a basket raffle. Several farming members of the Grange donated their farm fresh eggs or home-grown tomatoes for sale to benefit the organization as well. |
