Dust of the El Paso County Fair

New friend at the fair

The typical fair attractions whirled in the early morning - several dozen carnival rides, early announcements from the grandstands, a relentless sun beating down on the plains of eastern El Paso County. The fair just started, and the crowds were on their way. A sizzle of deep-fried fair foods stuck to the air. 

I marched straight to the livestock barns, the place where I felt most at home. Granted, I have never lived on a farm and probably never will. I have never even sat on a horse - that I hope to change. Little doses of farm life, from kids competing for fair ribbons to demonstrations of 19th century looming techniques by women in period clothes, bring me closer, if only for a little while.

The El Paso County Fair is out in Calhan, still within sight of Pikes Peak but a far different place than Colorado Springs, pressed into the foothills. Out in the plains, Calhan still sits at high elevation - about 400 feet higher than the Springs. The small town feels like a crossroads until turning off the main road, where fairgrounds rise from the farm fields.

While they don't photograph well because of the wire cages, the rabbit and poultry barns are full of animals exotic to people like me, who only known a few narrow breeds of chicken and rabbits. Like our fruits and vegetables, livestock has become homogenized.

In a single walk through the poultry barn I ran into dozens of breeds of chickens and game birds I never encountered before. As the various roosters extended their necks and crowed, most participants quietly ate their food and clucked irregularly. Other cages held turkeys and doves.

I appreciate that 4H and FFA kids gain a certain confidence from the responsibility of raising animals. As a kid, I was never in a position to participate. In rural Georgia, the fifth-grade had a 4-H component but we moved before any of the activities kicked in. After that, it was covering FFA and 4-H events as a reporter.

More recently, the FFA chapter at the high school near my Nashville house held an annual open house, letting us into the yard I saw every day on the way home from work.  The llamas, alpacas, chickens, goats and waterfowl made for a fun May afternoon each year.  The students excitedly showed off ferrets, alpaca fur and the small creatures they tended.

Mostly I wandered. Among the big animals' outside enclosures, I ended up talking with a man and his two daughters who had two llamas in the big outdoor enclosures for alpacas and llamas. The girls didn't speak the way most kids speak to adults - they were respectful and authoritative about their llamas.  They wanted my questions.

Unlike most llamas, this pair had not been sheared. Some of the others had been, and the rough llama fur did not take well to the clippers. Much like a bison, the llama's fur insulates, keeping them comfortable year-round. The owner told me on chilly mornings, he brushes frost off their backs, and they barely notice.

The llamas didn't have the same wire cage problem as the smaller livestock. Several rushed up to the camera when I approached their corrals. These guys wanted their close-ups.


After a few years of heat and dust, I had walked the barns several times apiece, my nostrils tinged with the barnyard smells, goats still curious at my approach, except for two males who kept butting horns and the kid who kept trying to sleep in the hay holder while her mother ate the hay surrounding her.

Don't mistake  the enjoyment for nostalgia for a simpler life. Farmwork is hard, way harder than me writing reports from my spare bedroom. I have no idea all the strain and stress that goes into preparing these animals for the fair.

Watching teens corner goats who broke out of their pen, I know the farm just isn't my world. Still, I take any chance I can to step into it, even if I just manage once a year when the fair settles in Calhan.