Behind the scenes of the Jerome County Fair
“The last week or so, the last few days, there has been 17, 18, 19 hour days, to make this happen.”
JEROME, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — From 4H to FFA, the carnival, food trucks, vendors and even the 3-night rodeo, the Jerome County Fair is happening this week, but the manager of the fair says for her, it started one year ago.
“So for me and a number of my staff this is a full time, 365 day a year job,” said Andrea Wiesenmeyer, the fair manager.
A lot of the work does happen at the last minute though, up until last week, the fairgrounds were empty.
“So you are kind of seeing about a week of a hive of activity prior to the fair where everything starts to pop up, you start to see bleachers move, and show arenas go up, it’s a little hive of activity, and mostly volunteer work that does it,” said Wiesenmeyer.
One of the aspects of the fair is the rodeo which runs Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, preparation for this began on June 20.
“It’s a lot of feel, a lot of preparation, you can’t just go over the ground and go okay it’s good, you have to understand the equipment you are using, you have to understand how your ground responds, because every arena responds different, I can’t go to another arena and get it in the shape we can here,” said Bryant Nelson, the chairman of the rodeo committee.
For him and many others it is worth all the time and effort to see people come together for the local county fair.
“The last week or so, the last few days, there has been 17, 18, 19 hour days, to make this happen, and a lot of people are doing it, the whole committee, the fair board, the manager, and you have to have a passion for this, for 4H, for the kids, for the county fair atmosphere, and yeah its worth it,” said Nelson.
The fair runs through Saturday at midnight.
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