September 22, 2022

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL … WITH ‘WICKED’ MIDWAY RIDES AT BRACEBRIDGE FALL FAIR

BRACEBRIDGE — Fall has officially befallen us.

The autumn equinox arrived today.

But the Bracebridge Agricultural Society didn’t wait for the change of season to put on its annual Fall Fair and Horse Show on the weekend.

The four-day festival was a rural celebration with its 155-year roots deeply planted in and on the ground — with carnival of fun thrown in for gourd measure.

It was all creatures great and small Muskoka style.

You don’t have to be a farmer to start the day with a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon and pancakes before getting out in the fields to muck around in the chicken coop and cow patch or jump a horse.

The plowman’s special was just the beginning on Saturday and Sunday after the fairgrounds opened Thursday morning for vendors and exhibitors to place their flower, produce and various exhibits in the central meeting hall.

For the next 80 hours Jim Lang Park was transformed into a pioneer village with judging, draft horse pulls, daily entertainment and the lure of lights at night to entice toddlers to teens to the midway to spin, turn upside down and for everyone to take home a prized stuffy.

**“Heartland here I come.” This cowgirl was right at home in cow barn Saturday at the Bracebridge Agricultural Society’s four-day Fall Fair and Horse Show.**

Hundreds did that and hundred more took home coveted ribbons for everything from the biggest pumpkin to the best vegetable, flower, quilt, chicken, cow, sow and children’s drawing and photos.

Wherever you looked, strolled or meandered there were birds of multi-coloured feathers, and birds that all got your goat — or goats.

If that tired you out, you could sit one out to enjoy watching of participating in a square dance or listen to a steel drum band, pipe band or Olde Tyme Gospel Band that were all in addition to the entertaining exhibits inside the grand hall.

Call it a rural reality check.

A chance to take a break from COVID and 2022 madness to stop, think and realize a little about where the roots groceries grow from and that hamburgers were once alive.

And once upon a time this is the way some Muskokans subsisted and a few — if growing number — still attempt to sustain life on the planet amid a climate of change.

Good luck. And see them next fall.