Today’s blog feels a little bit like time travel… Even though we don’t really go back in time, the Fall Fair on Salt Spring island, BC, is an old-fashioned, small town fair that does seem to take you back in time.

But the Salt Spring Fair is real and it happens every year. It’s a place where you can still enjoy good, clean family fun. The Salt Spring Island Farmers’ Institute (SSIFI) has been organizing the annual event, together with the island’s farmers, since 1896! The fundamental principals are to support agricultural preservation, development and sustainability. It also helps to create awareness of what is locally grown on our island.

Every year our Fall Fair is on the second weekend of September. People can enter almost anything in the displays and competitions. Eggs, carrots, tomatoes, jams - they can all be judged and win ribbons. Or not.

Kids can enter Lego or photos and many other art objects. There are amazing quilts on display, elaborately decorated cakes and flower arrangements.

From about 1950 to 1970 there was no Fair due to a decline in agricultural practises but since 1976 it’s back with a vengeance. My favorite demonstration is watching the sheep herding demonstrations. There’s also sheep shearing and many other demonstrations.

My neighbors embraced participating in this year’s fair by entering their small dog in the Best Dress Pet competition. The dog won, wearing a chicken suit! The also entered a chicken in… the chicken race.

But the most popular event of the Fair is undoubtedly the zucchini races. Yes, you are reading that right! Long before the fair, local kids hunt for the best, sometimes largest zucchinis. Using wheels of all shapes and sizes, and materials to decorate, they turn zucchinis into lean, mean machines. From Godzilla zucchinis to Baby Belugas (Raffi lives on this island), from zucchini hedgehogs to monster trucks,

The best pumpkins. The largest can weigh around 300 pounds.

When the zucchini race is announced, hundreds of people flock to the field where a long track, divided into 3 paths, is set up. The MC talks up the entries and the audience counts down. Then the flying machines are released! Some fly down, actually get airborn at the end of the ramp and fly into the waiting haybales like racecars. Other get… well, side tracked. Or give up all together. Sometimes the wheels come off. But everyone cheers. The fastest zucchini get a ribbon. And the crowd loves it.

Zucchini floatplane by Krista, who won People’s Choice Award!

I like sauntering through the barns with pigs, donkeys, even llamas and geese. The chickens and roosters come in every shape and size as well as in every colour. It’s lovely to see young 4H people caring for their livestock and proudly showing them off to crowds who, sometimes, don’t know that eggs need to be fertilized before they can be hatched….

Time to go get cotton candy on a stick, or a charbroiled lamburger. The most popular food on the Fair, every single year, is pie! The Pie Ladies bake cherry, apple, blackberry and every other kind of fruit pie under the sun. And the customers line up waaayyyy down the lane, around the corner and beyond, waiting patiently for their treasured piece of homemade pie. The Pie Ladies are officially known as The Salt Spring Women’s Institute. They bake pies with fruit but also with love for their community. The more than 700 pies raise money - last year about 14,000.- which is donated back to the community. They have made over 12,500 pies since 2001 and given away over $100,000 in the past ten years. Quite a feat for a group that has historically had fewer than twenty members. A sweet deal in all aspects.

There’s also music. From bluegrass to jazz, including our local celebrities Raffi and Valdi. There are a few small rides for kids and a policecar to sit in. The cotton-candy-sticky hands love turning on the siren or climbing in the local firetruck. Teenagers have as much fun as little kids, and mingle with Fair goers of all ages. And when it’s all over, the tired crowds trudge home along dusty roads lined with cars. Or they use the school busses that serve as shuttle busses to get back to town. We’ll see everyone and everything again next year, at the next Fair!

BOOKS:

Trauma Farm, Brian Brett