Putting together the Hopkinton State Fair is like building a city.
First to arrive are the agricultural campers, followed by the amusement park rides. Then, the food vendors: pretzels and fried dough, chicken barbecue and ice cream, doughnuts, and all the other quintessential fairground fare.
The week leading to opening day, Debbie Curtis, president of the Hopkinton State Fair, can often be found traveling the grounds via golf cart, her preferred method of transportation before people arrive, going through checklist after checklist with her fellow board members. Is the insurance in place? Have the contracts been finalized? Is the fencing up, and are the barns stocked with sawdust?
“It’s just a vibrant, energetic feeling as it’s building up,” Curtis said by phone before opening. “You’re watching a city come together over five days. It’s amazing how everyone does their part, and everything comes together.”
Finally, just before opening day, the animals arrive, hooting and hollering, and the air fills with the smell of fried dough and the sounds of the merry-go-round. In the off-season, you could pass the fairgrounds without noticing, an open field dotted with trees and barns, but come Labor Day, you can’t miss it.
The 106th Hopkinton State Fair takes place Thursday through Monday, Sept. 1 to 5, with all the usual favorites: the Demolition Derby, the Monster Truck Show, the Axe Women Loggers of Maine, the Northeast Six Shooters, and the DockDogs. Ben Rinsey returns with chainsaw sculptures, and, new this year, JetPack Flying Water Circus performs jetpack-powered daredevil stunts above an Olympic-sized pool.
And while these are often the events that sell tickets, for a lot of people involved, the fair is really about the promotion of agriculture, Curtis said. She began working at the fair as a kid, helping facilitate the horse show and climbing up the ranks from there. Before her, her parents worked the fair, and this weekend, her grandson will be attending.
“I think the only way you can understand an organization like this is to know your roots. How your different departments and areas run, and what makes them function,” Curtis said. “It’s a family that comes together, and that’s what makes it fun.”
Andy Morrill, a board member who manages the grounds maintenance and grandstand events, also has deep roots with the fair. By day, he’s a dairy farmer who owns and operates Morrill Farm Dairy with his family, but every year, he returns to Hopkinton to work the fair. Before him, his grandfather was on the board for roughly 50 years, and it was also his grandfather who created the Morrill Farm Museum at the fair, filled with antique farm equipment and agricultural mementos.
“A lot of people enjoy seeing it. It causes them to step back in time, or think back to their grandparents’ farms. More and more people now aren’t involved in farming, so we try to teach them what’s going on and how it got to where it is today,” Morrill said.
Donna Stevens, a Chichester resident and owner of Betsy’s Country Fair Donuts, works her 57th fair this weekend. During her phone interview, she and her family were getting ready for the big event. The trailer was being cleaned, ingredients were being purchased, and there was still more to do. Upon arrival, the fridge would be loaded, the water hooked up, and of course, there’d be doughnuts to make.
Betsy’s Country Fair Donuts has always been a family affair, ever since Stevens’s father started the business in 1965. In those days, her mother worked the counter, her brothers did the frying, and she helped her father mix the dough and roll the doughnuts. Their jumbo doughnuts are still made from scratch with the same recipe her father used.
“It was my father’s dream to do the fair. That’s my driving force. When I go out to the fair, that’s when I think of my father the most because we worked very closely together for a number of years,” Stevens said.
This will be her last year making doughnuts, with her son, Jamie Cross, her daughter-in-law, Amy Cross, and her grandson, Max Cross, taking over next year. She’s looking forward to taking a step back and just enjoying the event that sometimes makes her recognizable to strangers. (In fact, when she and her husband began dating, he arrived at her house, saw the doughnut trailer in the backyard, and said, “Now I know how I knew you!”)
“It’s the people I really look forward to seeing,” Stevens said. “[The fair] is the only time we see a lot of them, but we can pick up with them as if we saw them yesterday.”
The Hopkinton State Fair is a nonprofit, with no funding from the state, surviving solely on its volunteer-run board of directors, staff and superintendents. For everyone involved, the fair is a passion project, fueled by their dream that it continues for years to come.
At age 40, Morrill says he’s one of the youngest on staff but hopes more people from the next generation become involved, both for his sons, who are showing cows this year, and for the agricultural community as a whole.
“Like anything, there has to be another generation, or it’s going to come to an end,” Morrill said. “I grew up at the fair and I’ve always enjoyed it, and it’s been an important part of my family. I want to see it continue, and I want to see the promotion of agriculture. … For a lot of people, the only time they will see a pig or a sheep or dairy cow or pair of steers is here at the fair.”
The Hopkinton State Fairgrounds are located at 392 Kearsarge Ave., Hopkinton. Admission is $14 per day but free for Hopkinton residents on Thursday for “Townie Night,” with separate admission to certain events. For hours and the full schedule, visit hsfair.org.
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