If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine yourself there. The smell of popcorn, fried food and grilled meat permeates the air. Children laugh and scream in delight as machines crank and pull them up another hill before dropping them down the other side. A loudspeaker booms with music and an announcer starts up the next show. In the background, you can hear animals calling to one another, and an auctioneer starting his spiel, calling out numbers and prices. 

You’re at the Colorado State Fair. But the fair is so much more than carnival rides and foods on a stick. It’s where urban meets rural, often for the first time.

My own son met his first cow there, and many other children encounter a wide variety of farm animals they’ve only seen in books. They watch baby chicks peck their way out of an egg, exclaiming in awe as the chicks stretch their wings for the first time, hopping and flapping. They meet lambs and foals, and watch piglets drink their mothers’ milk, seeing first-hand the cycle of life that feeds so many of us. They touch corn and beans and play on tractors, learning how our food is grown and harvested, and how Colorado’s agricultural heritage remains strong to this day.

Then there are the youth, not unlike myself, who have grown up going to fairs for a reason other than to play the games and watch the shows. For me and so many other 4-H and FFAers, the state fair is the culmination of months of hard work, raising up an animal to maturity.

Those months and sometimes years teach kids and teens responsibility, dependability, and more. Their animal has to be fed and taken care of every single day. Even when it’s snowing. Even on school days. Even when they might not be feeling well. That perseverance and drive sees them through to the end and proves to them what they can accomplish, little by little each day, through hard work and keeping at it. And that’s not to mention the other skills these programs teach, such as public speaking, citizenship, and business acumen.

Adults also come for the concerts and stay for the rural education. This year they came to see the inaugural World Slopper Eating Contest and hear about the Pueblo Chile, famous in our region and beyond for its flavor and heat. They learn how Pueblo’s hot summer days, rich soil and pure water contribute to its popularity, and talk to the farmers who grow it, the restaurateurs who use it, and the consumers who enjoy it.

These agricultural opportunities are not ones you can get every day; in fact, you can only get them for 11 days each year, at the end of August and the beginning of September, at the Colorado State Fair.

Some might have come to the fair just for the rides, for the shows, for the food. But they might have wandered into the events center while the auction ring was live, and taken the opportunity to celebrate the labor and care the FFA and 4-H youth have put into their animals. They might have poked their heads into the Agriculture Pavilion and learned how over 170,000 jobs in Colorado come from the agricultural industry, which contributes more than $40 billion to our state economy. They took their little ones to see the baby farm animals and crop exhibits, and incidentally, started teaching the next generation about where their food comes from, and how so much of it is grown only a few miles away, by their friends and neighbors, right here in Colorado.

The Colorado State Fair is, at its heart, a celebration of the agriculture of our state, and I’m always gratified to be able to share that culture with our visitors each year, regardless of their initial reason for attending.

Thank you to everyone who came to see us this year, and to those who didn’t, we look forward to seeing you next year.

?Scott Stoller is general manager of the Colorado State Fair. He grew up on a ranch in Calaveras County, California, where he raised and showed cattle at the county and state fairs as well as worked in his family’s agritourism business in a Gold Rush-era state historic park.