Well, they (the International Astronomical Union) finally made a decision, and agreed to strip Pluto of its planetary status (see the BBC story here).
An overview of the fair grounds, with one of two banks of conveniently located portable restroom facilities (good ol'l' "Johnny on the Spot"s). Sometimes events don't have enough restrooms set up for the demand, but I'm pleased to say that Agrifest was well prepared. :) (An important thing when you're miles and miles away from the nearest restaurant or coffee shop with a bathroom!)
This was kinda funny, a woman dressed as a chicken with a "Follow Me" sign, walking around the grounds...I think she was trying to let people know where the sheep shearing and/or the baby chicks hatching areas were.
There were many, many, informational booths, with lots of pamphlets and brochures to read! I came away with a LOT of reading material! The only thing I was kinda surprisedd at was that there wasn't much opportunity to buy from farmers here - a couple of farmers s were selling cheese (YUM!) and some herb farmers were there, but I thought there'd be more fresh fruits and vegetables. But I suppose we are in the Valley, there are tons of farmer stalls on the roadsides... :)
There were booths from the Nova Scotia Cranberry Growers, Nova Scotia winegrowers s, seed companies, agricultural associations & schools, and tons more!!!!
Ross Farm - GOTTA go back there! We went twice during elementary school for school trips - it was SOOO much fun! You get to see tonnes of farm animals, and see how farms were run back in the 1800s. I have such fond memories, I really look forward to going back some day! Here we see a cooper booth (a barrel maker) - barrels made the old-fashioned way.
Pysanky Booth - A wonderful woman I've been in touch with for the last few years, named Marg Millard, had a great booth on pysanky at Agrifest this year! But in all the excitement of meeting her in person for the first time, and talking pysanky-talk, do you think I remembered to take a pic of her awesome booth??!! NO! Of course not!!! *sigh* Fortunately she has several pics of it on her website, as well as her ownreminiscencess of Agrifest 2006. Be sure to check it out: http://margmillard.ca/Page21_agrifest_Eggs.html .
For the beginning of the day, these lovely blonde horses were giving the wagon tours.
While the blonde horses weregivingg tours, these deep brown (chestnut?) horses rest in the shade of the small forest on the side of the property. Such gentle ladies, these horses - they just looked casually at me while I came up close to them and took their pictures. :)
Later on, they're harnessed up and ready to pull wagon tours around the fairgrounds - this adorable little girl was very excited to get a chance to pet a real horsey! :)
Aren't they just gorgeous! So beautiful.
No real cows here, but they did have a pretend cow set up so you could give milking a try!
People showing the ancient art of spinning wool. It's really wonderful that there are people who still keep these traditions alive in one form or another (as you can no doubt tell from my LearnPysanky site, I'm big on remembering ourtraditionss and adapting and carrying them with us into the future). :)
Encased in glass (for safety's sake, just in case) was a big bunch of bees! You could see some honeycomb and everything, it was pretty cool!
They also had a sample of the type of setup beekeepers use instead of a natural (bee-made) beehive. Everything's in slide-out trays. :)
These little guys, in a warming pen, were born just the day before. They brought the eggs to the show, and they hatched while there! Must have been a fun thing to watch! They're really cute! :)
For the Serious Farmer, all the newest farm equipment was on show, with representatives available to talk to. Of course, this stuff would be a huge hit with little kids, too - they always love to look at big machines!
And some equipment they used to use in the "old days" - Dave's mom's man friend remembers using a machine just like this when he was young on his family farm. Times sure have changed...
If you wanted to take a more modern form of tour around the fairgrounds, you could take a tractor-pulled wagon (instead of the horse-drawn one). It was much bigger, of course. :)
This was odd, don't really know what was happening here, which is why I took a picture of it. This large group of people were walking really quickly behind the wagon (as you can see, it's mostly empty), like they were trying to catch up to it and get on, but never quite being able to do so...were they following it to its next stop? Who knows? Odd...
This was a piece of equipment that the public could try out themselves - a disinfecting machine for shoes, meant for visitors and workers who want to enter a farm. Farms have to be very careful about diseases, bacteria, etc. coming into their farms and infecting their livestock. So people have to disinfect their footwear before entering barns, to ensure they don't track anything in. Cool, eh?
In the food area (there was a LOT of different types of foods available), and lots of places to sit. There was also live music playing - while we were there, it was a country'n'western band. Pete of Pete's Frootique is sitting at the green table with the kind of pinkish shirt on. He's become a local celebrity - he runs a couple of well-known exotic/specialty fruit/vegetable/meat/packaged goods shops in the Halifax Regional Municipality. He often does spots on TV regarding unusual foods that would be fun to try.
This food outlet was the most fun to watch - they made their own bread dough, and then would make you a custom pizza with it, fired in a real fire oven. It looked SO delicious!! Never had time to have any though... :\ Maybe next year.... I think this place was run by the Oakhaven Bakery, but I can't be sure because I forgot to take a pic of the sign. :)
I took this shot (from the car) of some of the beautiful fields of farmland in the Valley - Nova Scotia is densely forested over most of its area, so it's rather novel to see large areas of cleared land. :)
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