MN State Fair

Disclaimer: all of the photos below, unless noted otherwise, are from www.mnstatefair.org and do not belong to me.


Yesterday, I went to the State Fair with my friend S.  Despite living in this state since 2005, I had never gone before.  It was a very fun time, and I would definitely go again next year.


First, we went to the Heritage exhibits.  Some nice pottery and other crafts; some really strange kitschy stuff.  After that, we went to the livestock exhibits.  It was 4-H Llama Day, so we toured the stalls with kids brushing llamas.

These llamas look particularly happy.

I was surprised at how intelligent these guys looked.  I was expecting the general interest level of a cow, and instead they were curious like goats.  Several watched us intently as we walked by.


Next, we went into the Swine Barn.  Pigs are big!  And, somewhat sadly, they look like meat hung on a skeleton.  Minnesota's Largest Boar was especially disturbing.

Credit: roadfood.com

The sow and her piglets were cute, but also a little sad in that she's kept in that "sow stall", which keeps her from squishing, eating, or otherwise killing her little ones, for 21 days.  During that time, she doesn't get up at all.  She can't even turn over.  Sad.

We weren't able to go into the horse barn because it was being cleaned and prepared for a new set of horses to move in.

These were all over the place around the agricultural section of the fair.

There weren't any shows going on in the Colisseum while we were there, but it was a pretty cool space anyway.

Note the size of these cows-- significantly smaller than their handlers.  This is what I thought a cow looked like.

In the Cattle Barn, I learned that full-grown cows are HUGE.  Like whoa.

These are Jersey Cows, which, although still XXL, are not as large as...

Holstein cows.  Credit: www.fwi.co.uk

Holy cow!  (Ahahaha...)


Our last stop in the agriculture area was the Miracle of Birth center.  I found this building to be a little silly.  Basically, they get as many pregnant animals there as they can, and hope that some of them might give birth during the fair.  While we were there, there were a large number of people watching a pig give birth.  We didn't feel like fighting the crowd to get close enough to see, so we wandered around and looked at all the other babies.

Lamb-lings!

Now, just so you don't worry, yes, we did look at other things besides animals.  But for me, that was the most fun part.  We ate authentic fair food: fried cheese curds.  We wandered through the international bazaar (but didn't buy anything).  We saw the Horticulture exhibit, including the largest pumpkins:

You could totally make a child's carriage out of one of those.  Cinderella, anyone?

Man, that would be a cool Halloween costume.  Hollow out one of those monsters into a carriage, dress your toddler girl-child up as Cinderella, and have your dog pull the carriage.  Awesome.


Just as we were leaving the Horticulture exhibit, we were halted in our progress towards cheese curds by the daily parade.

There were several high school marching bands, and they were good.  Certainly better trained and more disciplined than our marching band was, although in my opinion their playing left something to be desired.


Once the parade was over, we found cheese curds and walked back to S's apartment.  I was very glad to sit down for awhile.