Bulk of County Fair Cancelled; Entertainment Fees Avoided
The Queen’s Contest, Parade, Livestock Shows, Cook-off Will Proceed if Possible
The Fayette County Fair Association announced after a board of directors meeting Monday night that there will be no county fair this year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. However, the Fair Association will sponsor a few events that were scheduled to take place, including the Queen’s Contest, livestock show, commercial heifer show and sale, parade and barbecue cookoff.
Officially, the City of La Grange and the Fayette County Judge’s Office ordered the cancellation of this year’s fair. If the board of directors decided to cancel the fair on its own, the Fair Association would have been legally bound to pay tens of thousands of dollars in entertainment fees to the musical artists scheduled to perform at this year’s fair.
Fair Board President Michael Zuhn said the Association will be free of those obligations since the City and County ordered the cancellation. Zuhn said the Association will ask those artists to perform at next year’s fair.
Zuhn said the plans formulated at the meeting Monday night were all contingent on approval from City and County officials.
He said the Association was working closely with those officials to formulate the plans. County Emergency Management Chief Craig Moreau attended the meeting Monday night and offered advice to the directors about how to proceed.
In a phone call on Tuesday morning, Moreau said he and the directors agreed that the Fair would not be able to maintain adequate social distancing if the event were to take place as usual.
“But we can still make the smaller events work, particularly the events that benefit children,” Moreau said.
The Fair Queen’s Contest, in which local high school ladies compete for scholarship money by selling fair tickets, will take place as scheduled on Thursday, Sept. 3, at the Marge Rosenberg Stage inside the fairgrounds. The time has been moved one hour to 7 p.m. The Little Mister and Little Miss pageant will also take place.
The commercial heifer show and sale will also take place as scheduled, on Friday, Aug. 28 and Saturday, Aug. 29. Organizer Lee Fritsch said he and other organizers hope to set up a livestream of the sale so that buyers can bid in the auction online or over the phone if they do not wish to attend in person. The sale will also be broadcast live on a large screen at the Marge Rosenberg Stage so that buyers who come to the sale can spread out.
The Fayette County Fair Livestock Show will take place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 5 and 6. The board decided to cancel the poultry and pigeon shows, since exhibitors in those two shows are mostly older, retired people, who are among the most at-risk for COVID-19.
A parade will take place on Saturday, Sept. 5, beginning at 10 a.m. It will be called the Labor Day Weekend Parade sponsored by the Fayette County Fair. Zuhn said the Association will consult with the City of La Grange about possible changes to the route in order to allow for social distancing.
“The parade, although it will be different, will hopefully give our graduating seniors something to participate in as a class since they have been robbed of so much their last year. These details are still being worked on,” the Fair Directors said in a press release issued Monday night. “The Mission of the Fayette County Fair Association is to promote agriculture and youth education. By sponsoring these things, we hope to somehow help this cause.”
The barbecue cookoff will take place on Saturday, Sept. 5. The winner of the Fayette County Fair Cookoff earns a spot to cook at the prestigious Houston Livestock Show Barbecue Cookoff. Last year’s Fayette County cookoff champion, Curt Harbers, went on to win the Houston cookoff. If the Association cancelled the cookoff, Fayette County would not have a new representative at the Houston cookoff in 2021.
The Fair Directors also voted Monday night to spend $400 on a “virtual fair” online platform. The platform will allow the Fair Association to livestream the Queen’s Contest, livestock show, heifer sale, parade and barbecue cookoff awards ceremony. It will also provide vendors and sponsors with a place to advertise online. The virtual fair platform will also allow visitors to donate to nonprofit Fair vendors. Those vendors, including the La Grange Rotary Club, Optimist Club and Schulenburg Lions Club, stand to lose thousands of dollars in revenue that the Fair generates for them each year.