A Day at the Fair

This post is a little dated, but I wanted to include it because it gives a good sense of the sort of thing we spent our time doing shortly after we got to England. A few weeks after we arrived, in August, the harvest was in full swing. (We live smack in the middle of England's agricultural green belt.) Combines, harrows and balers were whizzing by our cottage at all hours. Grain was being harvested and hay was being packed into those lovely rectangles and rolls that now dot the ploughed landscape.

At the same time, little posters were popping up all over the road sides advertising the local village fetes. We visited several of them-some tiny, like the one in our own village which lasted only a few hours, others enormous, lasting the entire day and attracting visting crowds of thousands. But like all good country fairs, they each celebrated the pride of local life, from parades of prize farm animals to cooking contests (preserves, pies, etc.) to demonstrations by local crafts and guilds. The latter, of course, captured my interest most.

Below are some photos from the Wychwood Fair, where we had a go a shooting with the  local archery club, caught a ferret race (run by a ferret rescue organization, eww), watched woodturning demonstrations, chatted with the Oxfordshire Beekeepers about queenspotting, and saw some local wool being spun and woven. This wasn't the biggest (or the smallest) of the fairs we went to, but it embodied the spirit of the village fete completely.