This year’s Marion County Fair was unlike any other year. Due to COVID-19, the fair only included 4H and FFA exhibits, and was limited to exhibitors and their families. Marion County Extension Youth Coordinator Mindy Hardman says that this year’s fair was a balancing act between the health and safety of all involved and giving the county’s youth a chance to exhibit all their hard work.

“Nobody has done this before, no one has done a fair like this. A lot of it was just kind of a waiting game to see where we were at and what kind of rules and regulations we were going to have to work under. It was really interesting, just keeping in the forefront that we need to think about our kids’ safety, our families, our volunteers, all those kinds of people. So that was always at the forefront. But also right there was that these 4H and FFA kids had been working all year long on these projects, so we really were striving to offer them some form of exhibition so they could show off the hard work they had done this year.”

Hardman adds that while static exhibit numbers were down, the livestock exhibit numbers largely remained the same as previous years. For complete results from this year’s fair, go to KNIAKRLS.com and click here.