Kiwis and Fairy Bread

1-8 August 2025

I can’t keep calm it’s fair week.

According to Dictionary.com the first recorded use of the word fair is just before the year 900, spelled faeger meaning “beautiful, attractive”. It appears in another use around the year 1300 spelled freire, meaning “religious festival, holiday”. Both these definitions describe my recent week volunteering at The Somerset County 4-H Fair.

For me, it is a week of singular focus. A week when I live under tents and return home only to sleep. When I work with hundreds of adult and youth volunteers to present something very special. And like any good vacation, at it’s conclusion I am left with exhaustion, relief, and euphoria.

For those of you who are not familiar with the term “4-H”, let me explain. Started over one hundred years ago to encourage youth to learn about new developments in agriculture, 4-H has grown to be the largest youth development organization in the United States. The four H’s stand for Head, Heart Hands, Health. Clubs are lead by volunteers supported by county staff. Each focuses on a particular subject. The subject is now not only related to animals and agriculture, but pretty much anything. The clubs that I lead focus on theatre.

If you have ever been to a county or country fair in the U.S., chances are 4-H has been a part of it.

As a child one of the highlights of my summer was going to The Ocean County Fair. My mother would pile my brother, sister, myself and plenty of neighborhood kids into our VW bus and drive into Ocean County Park. The entrance was lined with tall, dark, cool, shady pine trees with a heavenly scent. The day would then be filled with animals, crafts, and snow cones. We would always visit the gravesite of Barney, the old hound dog who used to visit our school and had rescued lost children. At night we would return to the fair with my father, who would lift me up onto his shoulders so I could see the musical performances, and drum circles lead by local Native Americans.

Everywhere we went at this fair, kids were doing stuff. These 4-Hers were grooming sheep, riding horses, training dogs, leading cows, showing off needlework, flowers or the huge vegetables they had grown. I admired these kids. I wanted to be one of them, but it just never happened. And then, after I was about eight years old we stopped going. “It has changed” my parents said. And 4-H was lost to me.

Until I had my own children and found The Somerset County 4-H Fair. It was all that I had remembered! I was hooked. So much so that one fateful year, I had wanted to attend, but Emily and Ben did not. I begged, Ben agreed, saw gerbils at the fair, joined The Radical Rodents Club and the next year the two of us proudly went into the “4-Hers Only” areas!

Now I work all year to prepare for Fair Week. With other amazing women I lead two clubs: The Clover Ensemble and The Prep Ensemble for youth ages 5 and up. We give our members experience in all aspects of theatre culminating in a show at the Fair that they have written, directed, performed and crewed themselves. This year we would put on The Jungle Book.

The Fair has many tents, which house and show off all that the 4-H clubs do. There are tents of animals: cows, sheep, goats, rabbits, alpacas, poultry, dogs and reptiles. Tents filled with trains, remote control cars and airplanes, insects and plants. The tent that I help to supervise is called “Arts and Science” , an eclectic group of over thirty clubs that focus on everything from magic to theatre, sewing to crafts, food to jump roping, Chinese culture to anime.

The set up of this tent started on a Saturday when my friends and fellow tent supervisors, Betty and Conrad, painted and fixed display boards that would be the walls of our tent. It took us eight hours. Sunday morning about seventy volunteers joined us to put up and secure those boards, (made of 4 x 8 foot sheets of plywood), set up tables, screens, and signs. Another four hours there. Monday I returned again to transport my Jungle Book scenery from another building, secure it to a stage and put together backstage curtains,

At home on Monday evening, I was excited. It was all feeling a bit like Christmas. I busied myself in the kitchen baking cookies for fellow volunteers, making dinners to get Mike and I through my busy week. Setting aside presents for my 12th grade club members. Packing my suitcase with everything I could possibly need for the next four days. I was looking forward to spending time with many old friends. And I would be celebrating.

On Tuesday at 8am I arrived at the fairgrounds with a carload of supplies for the Arts and Science Tent. Went back home to get the six tech boxes containing The Clover Ensemble’s sound system. I spent the morning on various tasks: rolling up the flaps (walls) of our huge tent, helping leaders and members put up their displays (“I forgot to bring something for the backdrop of my display.” Me: “Here’s a box full”. “Do you have any scissors?”. Me: “In that drawer”. “Are they serving lunch today?” Me: “11:30, in the 4-H Center across the street: Oh you go ahead, I’ll man the fort”.

And then the plants arrived. Hionis Greenhouses, a local wholesale nursery donates flowers to decorate our tent. And not just a rack or two: but an entire cargo truck and a half! Hundreds of colorful, beautiful potted flowers. Racks and racks come off the truck. Myself and volunteers take every plant off and into the tent. Supervisors from other tents arrive: “Can we take some?” Me; “ Of course! Please take MORE!” And for the rest of the afternoon we place the flowers in and around our tents.

2pm and it’s time to bring all of props, scenery and costumes over from the 4-H center. At 4pm my fellow Clover Ensemble leaders and members start to arrive. At 5pm we set up the sound system. At 6:15 Jungle Book dress rehearsal begins. It goes great!

The rest of the evening is spent storing all the Jungle Book stuff in a corner of the tent. I see that the displays of both my clubs are put up. I help other leaders with anything they need and just when I am about to leave at 10pm, another leader arrives “Where’s my table? Where’s my booth? Do you have something I can cover it with?” Of course, I stay until he has all he needs.

As I finally head to my car, the fair looks amazing. Color is everywhere. Animals are lowing. Teenagers have arrived to spend their night looking after them. The scent of 200 pounds of bacon being pre-cooked by a food vendor smells heavenly. It reminds me that I have not eaten anything for hours.

Exhausted, I drive home, slip into bed and am so wired and excited I barely sleep.

Wednesday morning I put on my new Clover Ensemble t-shirt and my 4-H name tag. Arriving at the fairgrounds at 8:30am I breathe in one of my favorite scents: wet grass and tent vinyl. At 10am I find that my son Ben is there to do his volunteer job as fair announcer. He declares over the loud speaker that The 2025 Somerset County 4-H Fair is open! Cheers resound throughout the fairgrounds. Dignitaries, kids, alpacas and ducks join in the ribbon cutting ceremony. We made it!

The day is a full one. Visitors arrive. Animal shows begin. Food vendors open. Activities of all kinds are ready. 4-Hers do stuff. I deal with confused leaders in my tent. I greet Abner, the oldest of our 4-H volunteers, as he holds court in the info Tent, asking everyone if they are having a good fair. Lunch time and Mike arrives with some colleagues to enjoy some good fair food. I join them for a bit. My fellow leader Indhira and I make paper plate snakes with young visitors. At some point I hide for almost 45 minutes and don’t do anything. Then it is time to load in my, our, show.

Newly painted flats with jungle scenes are brought from my tent to the stage in another. Bins of props, folding tables, a throne, a rack of costumes, sculptures made of grocery baskets and shiny junk, and those six boxes of sound equipment all are brought over and set up.

My kids, leaders and I are excited! We work together. Parent volunteers get the actors mic’d and costumed. Mike is back to film the show. Fellow leaders warm up the actors. My member directors, Vedaang and Tabby, give final notes and a pep talk. Eva my stage manager, goes over the scene changes with her crew. Neil and Aurick find my script (which I always lose)! Ben announces our show on the loud speaker. Our audience fills the tent. 5pm: Places!

This is IT! The narrator reads from the original Rudyard Kipling text before Shere Khan the tiger threatens little Mowgli. The wolf pack, Bagheera the Panther and Baloo the Bear defend Mowgli, and sing The Bare Necessities. The Queen arrives and takes Mowgli to her lair for a dance number. And finally, Mowgli leaves the jungle to live with humans again.

Applause, bows, another round of Bare Necessities. We all have a wonderful time. I am so proud of everyone.

It takes an hour to pack up Jungle Book for the evening. At 7pm I help Indhira with the 4-H Parade of Clubs, and a hundred 4-Hers march around the fairgrounds and cheer. Fun!

At 9:30pm it is dark and I can go on no longer. The fair doesn’t close until 10, but the last few days have finally caught up with me. I go home and actually sleep.

Back to the fair 9am on Thursday and all goes well. I work with Ben in the information Tent, helping visitors to find their way. I visit my young friend Martin and he shows me his cow. Jungle Book’s second performance has a few slip ups, but nothing we can’t improvise and laugh about. It is cute and fun. Mike had done our photo call and stays for a while. I actually have time to walk around the fair with him. Lovely! 10pm and home to sleep.

The third day of Fair and the weather has, unusually, stayed perfect! Temps in the mid 80’s, low humidity and not a rain drop in site. Last year we had so much rain, the fair was closed for two out of the three days. That had been rough. Today we cheerily say to each other “We deserve this!”

Lots of visitors, more fun. Our third and final performance of Jungle Book is flawless. I am glowing with pride for my 30 plus 4-H kids, leaders and parents. I sob. I get lots of hugs. I smile ear to ear.

Time to strike the show. Everything gets piled into the trailers of three golf carts and haphazardly unloaded into the 4H Center. I am feeling great. I can easily make it to midnight. Various tasks until nearly 10pm when we will take EVERYTHING down. Ben starts the count down. Hundreds of 4-Hers join in. 10pm! The fair is over! Ben does a poignant end-of-fair speech.

Organized chaos as displays are dismantled, tables and chairs are returned to a central location, screens and boards are loaded. Plants are gathered. In an hour the hardest work is done. “Take plants home with you everyone! Please! Take more!” Another hour and my car is packed. It is dark and quiet. I walk onto the bare stage in an empty tent, and, as is my tradition, I imagine it all alive again. And take my final bow.

Home for a few hours of restless sleep. Back to the fairgrounds again at 8am for a few hours of final clean up and organization of my props and costumes. Farewells and thanks to 4-H friends.

“It was a great fair, wasn’t it?”

“The best!”

A NOTE ABOUT THE FOLLOWING PHOTOGRAPHS: As this is a public page and I work with children, we have not included photos in which the youth that I work could be recognized.