The first thing you see when you walk in to the City Streets Country Road build-ing is fluffy alpacas, vivid trifolds, and crowds of young children. The CSCR is an exhibit that focuses on the agricul-ture in Frederick County. It offers a wide variety of information covering the ani-mals, hydroponics, recycling, and much more.

The City Streets Country Road agri-culture exhibit, established in 1995, is celebrating its 20th birthday this year. CSCR was originally created to educate public about the agriculture that hap-pens here in Frederick. To celebrate this great milestone as a part of the fair here will be a small party of sorts.

Today, many elementary and middle schools – as well as some high schools – have field trips to the Great Freder-ick Fair to learn about the agriculture, making the City Streets Country Road exhibit a favored stop of interest.

“We get a couple thousand kids throughout the week, so it’s quite bust around here,” said City Street Country Road worker, Joe Crum. “They’ll usually have some worksheets with them and go searching for specific information in around the place,” he added.

The City Street Country Road has won national and state awards for its educa-tion in agriculture. The building exhibits a great amount of information, not only through traditional informative boards, but through engaging visual aspects as well. It features fun facts, pictures, tri-folds, dioramas, and posters of the dif-ferent topics to fascinate the many kids

that come on field trips, and the general public looking for new information.

When checking out the CSCR you can look forward to learning out about how you can create compost in your back-yard, thanks to The Frederick Country dept. of Solid Waste Management, as well as demonstrations from the EPA on how to keep the environment clean.

Another place of interest is the Sukup Agri-theater.

“The Agri-theater has information on different types of grains. We also have videos running throughout the day that talk about safety,” said Elizabeth Shriver.

The animals are inarguably one of the most popular aspects of the City Streets City Road’s displays. While it is largely because the animals are cute and friendly, they’re also a section of interest because of the presentations that occur, Crum said.

“At some points in the week, there will be demonstrations in which we take the wool and show how it becomes the finished product,” said Crum.

9 a.m. All buildings open to publicEquine Showcase/Expo: Inside Gate 34H/FFA Camalids Show: Bldg. 32

10 a.m. Open Class Swine Breeding Show: Bldg. 2510 a.m.- 8 p.m. Home Arts & Crafts Building Demonstrations; Bldg. 9

Farm & Graden Building Demonstratios: Bldg 14A11:30 a.m. Mark Hanak featured at Grandstand

12 p.m. Harness Racing and Kids Harness Peddle Races 7:30 p.m. Chase Bryant, Kellie Pickler and Easton Corbin Concert

Friday, September 25th

4 Let’s Do It! The Great Frederick Fair

L e t ’ s D o I t ! T h e G r e a t F r e d e r i c k F a i r !

September 25, 2015 • Volume 1, No. 7

NEWSLETTERHappy 20th

Birthday to our

City Streets Country Roads

Exhibit!

Be sure to visit this national

award winning exhibit!

M E D I A C O R E

1Let’s Do It! The Great Frederick Fair

Wednesday September 23rd The Great Frederick Fair housed a large crowd of people coming to watch local celebrities compete in the fair’s annual celebrity harness races. The races held for over a century have become quite a tradition here at the fair. The celebrity harness races have always been held the Wednesday of fair week.

Celebrities are paired each with a driver, and split into two separate heats. This year, each heat held 3 riders. The racers were situated into a cart called a sulky, and then were pulled along a one mile track. The first heat included Frederick News Post publisher Geordie Wilson, circuit court judge Scott Rolle, and attorney general Charlie Smith, while the second heat hosted Career and Technology teacher’s specialist Norm McGaughey, Fort Detrick Major Christopher Kessinger, and Amber Saunders from WAFY Key 103.1’s Morning Buzz.

The track located on the fairgrounds is one of only two competition worthy tracks in Maryland, causing the harness racers to travel throughout many different states to compete. The horses held at the fair that were competing in the harness races are trained on the local track each morning, and get to work with many different trainers. The track also serves as a training facility for competitors across the state. The races held at the

fair kick off the schedule for harness racing of the season.

“Winning the celebrity harness races is more of a bragging rights thing for the celebrity,” said Mark Zeigler, GFF Marketing Director. Publisher Geordie Wilson won the race on Wednesday, earning his bragging rights for this year. States Attorney Charlie Smith placed second, and court judge Scott Rolle placed third. In the previous year, Frederick County public school’s super

intendent Theresa Alban won the harness race.

Brian Mo from WFRE radio station also got to be an apprentice for the occasion, and went behind the scenes to find out more about each of the racers and their horses, Zeigler said.

Everyone here at the fair claims the harness horse races to be “a really fun event”, and encourages more viewers to come out next year.

Kicking Up the Dust at The Harness Races

Article and Photo by Jordan Champe

by Isabella Champe and Gracie Tanner

City Streets Country RoadsTwenty years of educating Frederick

The Great Frederick Fair Inc. and The Frederick County Agricultural

Society Inc. publish News as a general information service for its Life Members,

business clients and associates. Additional information regarding an of the matters published within may be

obtained from the Administration Office.

BOARD OFFICERSJoseph F. Devilbiss, Sr. – PresidentColby D. Hubble – Vice President

Robert W. Frank – SecretaryMaurice A. Gladhill – Treasurer

BOARD OF DIRECTORSJohn E. Bare

Charles B. CramerClyde C. Crum

James S. GrimesNancy N. Hendricks

Nancy F. KellerJacqueline L. Kreh

John P. MurphyJacob R. Ramsburg, Jr.

The Great Frederick Fair Inc. is a member of:

The Maryland Association of Agricultural Fairs and Shows Inc.

The International Association of Fairs

and Expositions

The Chamber of Commerce of Frederick County

The Frederick County Tourism CouncilThe Pennsylvania Association of Fairs

How to Reach Us...The Administration Office at

The Great Frederick Fair is open from 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. M – F

301.663.5895 p301.663.9719 f

www.thegreatfrederickfair.com

Our street address is 797 E. Patrick Street

By mail, address materials to P.O. Box 604, Frederick, MD 21701

Many people enjoy the fair, but few

realize what goes into creating the

experience. The Maintenance Staff,

headed by Dennis Sharitz and Randy

Wiles, said they enjoy working with all

the guys, while making sure everyone

has a pleasant experience here at the

fair. They hope the fair continues to

improve each year.

2 Let’s Do It! The Great Frederick Fair 3Let’s Do It! The Great Frederick Fair

Everyone loves walking through and seeing the prize winning an-imals, but how do those animals get to the prestigious level they are at? Walking through the animal ex-hibits, one can see the variety and intricacies of each individual ani-mal, how can they possibly choose a single winner?

Becca Buker, a fair participant who has been involved in animal showing since she was nine years old, now has daughters who enjoy showing pigs. While they pick a pig based on how cute it is, judg-es look for the pig with the best walk, discipline, and appearance. Judges look for loin size, shoulder width, and leg length. Most often pigs are chosen at birth, giving the owner no indication of their future appearance. Howev-er, this gives owners the opportunity to train and feed the pig into the desired physique. Judges prefer short-er legs on pigs, as they provide adequate support for the pig’s torso and create a more graceful walk.

Ruby Watkins, who is involved in rabbit showings at the Frederick Fair, shared the qualities judges desire

in a prized rabbit. Judges look for eye and ear size, coloring, markings, weight, and poses. Like the pigs, rab-bits begin their training at birth. Rab-bits must perfect the ideal pose to show off during competition. Before the contests, rabbits are groomed and cleaned up, their toenails are clipped and bedding replaced. Unlike the pig competitions, rabbit contests can only be entered by 4H members of FFA; there is no open class com-petition.

You may have noticed the lack of poultry at this year’s Great Frederick Fair. According to Nancy Carlisle, a fair worker, the Maryland Agricultural department decided to remove chick-ens in fairs all over the area due to a risk of the AI virus, commonly known

as the bird flu. Migrating geese, stopping over in Mary-land, are carriers of the bird flu. The Agriculture de-partment does not want to risk the possible outbreak among Maryland chickens. The Montgomery fair was the last in the area to have chickens. Chickens have not been able to be present since August 25 of this year. They hope to resume chicken showing next year.

Preparing for the Showby Olivia Arrington and Sydney Kaiser

The Birthing Center inside of the Great Frederick Fair contains the atmosphere of new life being welcomed into this world. The four cows that are in there are all in stage 2 of their pregnancy. Their care takers elaborated on the excitement of the calves coming, as well as the beauty behind the labor and connection that the mother and calf share.

Veterinarian Sarah Link explained the stages of child birth using cow #663, a dairy cow, who was the farthest along on Thursday. She was 9 months and 10 days pregnant, with an 80lb baby. She was in stage 2 of pregnancy, and expected to deliver soon. Dairy Cows take about 9 months to deliver the calf, similar to human’s child labor. Their first stages of pregnancy consist of 30 minute contractions and separation from the herd for quiet and peace, they become restless, in a kind of nesting behavior. Cow #663 was contracting on Thursday afternoon in order to prepare herself for labor, since the pregnancy is such a painful process.

Link also stated that in stage 2 of the delivery process contractions will last for about an hour, causing the cow to cry a lot. This is when the water bag begins to present

itself vaginally. After that the calf will probably be delivered in the next 24 hours. If the cow starts to panic, it may be because the baby is stuck and she cannot push any longer. That’s when humans step in, reaching their hands up the cow and helping to pull the calf out in a non-harmful manner.

“Similar to humans as well,” says Link “stage 3 begins, and the mother of the calf becomes very protective, licking it aggressively, which helps stimulate the calf. She also talks to her calf and will charge at anyone who comes near her calf.” Link explained the passing of the placenta, which occurs over 4 hours and may make the mother a little sick because she has lost so much in such a small amount of time. Within an hour the calf will be up and walking, if nurtured correctly.

The Great Frederick Fair loves being a host of the birth of calves, and enjoys the exhilarating process of the mother and calves connection. There are about 3 more cows giving birth the rest of the week. Fanatics of the births cannot wait to attend this week’s upcoming births as well as next year when the Great Frederick Fair returns.

The Birthing Centerstory and photo by Dajah Gee