After the fair: It’s not over until the cleanup is done

MOSES LAKE — The Grant County Fair was over, but there was still plenty of work going on at the fairgrounds Sunday morning.

“What comes after the fair is the real work,” said Kent Devine, Ephrata High School ag teacher and FFA advisor.

The animals entered in the livestock show and sale are gone by Sunday morning.

“A lot of tears with kids giving up their animals,” Devine said.

But the livestock barns still needed cleaning before locking the barn gates until next year.

Annjolenn Ahmann took home a couple of first places from the dairy livestock show. But a satisfactory showing didn’t make it any more fun to shovel out the stalls in the cattle barn, she said.

The Ahmann family brought a lot of entries, and that meant the family had to clean a lot of stalls.

“This stall,” said Powell Ahmann, pointing to the stall being cleaned by his sister, “and that stall, and that stall, and that stall.”

Sometimes the animals keep themselves pretty clean, but not this year, Powell Ahmann said.

“Oh, boy, this year they were always dirty.”

Most of the livestock barns are used sparingly between fairs. Some of the exhibit buildings, however, are rented year-round. As a result, all fair displays, fair informational posters, and other fair-related stuff has to be stored away.

The Ag Building was refurbished earlier this year, with the goal of making it one of those buildings that can be rented year-round. The refurbishment included insulation, exterior upgrades, new doors and an air conditioning and heating system. It also got new interior siding, and pretty spiffy pine tongue-and-groove siding, too. Ag Building supervisor Pam Lewison liked the new look.

“It’s night and day,” Lewison said. “A little bit more than we all expected. It’s beautiful in here.”

Among other chores, the Ephrata FFA students were removing all the posters in the Ag Building.

Commercial fair food vendors are by nature a portable business, and vendors were tearing down their equipment Sunday morning. Meanwhile, the local service organizations that sell fair food all have permanent buildings, and volunteers were cleaning machines, draining water lines and otherwise preparing the booths to go into storage until next year.

Most of the organizations said they had a pretty good fair. The Moses Lake Lions Club specializes in a fried confection called – because it’s the Lions booth – lion ears. Dennis Foster, busy cleaning the fryer, said the Lion ears went like hotcakes.

“We actually sold out,” he said.

It takes some work to get the fryer ready for hibernation.

“That’s the hardest job here,” said volunteer Dave Helms, who was cleaning the ice cream cooler.

“But we have to do it,” Foster said.

Cleaning starts with draining the oil, scrubbing it down, rinsing out the soap, deep cleaning it, rinsing again and letting it dry. But the fair is one of the club’s main fundraisers, so the fryer gets careful attention.

Setting up for the fair is pretty chaotic, Devine said, and it’s just as chaotic to tear down. And when it’s done, he has to go home and catch up on the work he put off for the fair, he said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.