County fair comes to Sandpoint seniors

SANDPOINT – Click. Click. Click. It’s the sound of goat hooves sauntering across the activity room at the Bridge at Sandpoint Assisted Living.

A black and white cow dog slipped by, silent. The chickens cooed and the bunnies stared wide-eyed from their cages.

“I’m an old 4-H leader,” resident Fairy Delay said as she pushed her walker toward the animals staged on the back patio in the shade. “Dairy and all that.”

She stopped to admire a nubian goat, brown and white with a curious face. She smiled as she ran her hand over the animal’s back.

This is exactly why activities director Angie Aller brings the Bonner County Fair to the residents at the Bridge.

“This is our town’s heritage,” said Aller, a native Sandpoint resident who understands the cultural importance of the annual fair beyond giving locals a place to show off flowers and vegetables, fabric arts, canning and animals. It’s the one time of year where people from town and country join together, socialize over coffee and a piece of pie.  

Yet it was problematic taking assisted living residents to the fair. About five years ago, Aller tried to push two large men in wheelchairs and guide a resident in a walker over gravel. Another resident got sick from the heat.

“It was too much chaos,” Aller said, cringing with the memory. 

Now Aller invites fair participants to bring their projects to the After Fair. She handed out fliers to people entering their items for judging, encouraging them to bring their projects and ribbons to the Bridge the Tuesday after the fair. She said it’s a way to honor the very people who helped establish the fair in 1927 and kept it thriving for decades.

“They want to still feel a part of it,” she said.

Two women inspected colorful green and blue eggs in a basket. 

“The chickens we had only laid one color,” one of the ladies said.

Jody Russell is from a fair family. She grew up at the fair and now her children show cows, pigs and horses among numerous other projects. She’s superintendent of the beef barn. The “Easter” eggs are from her chickens. Araucana lay the green and Ameraucana lay the blue, she explained, adding that the yolks are darker and richer than regular eggs.

“I’m really glad you brought them so I could see,” June Peck said. “I enjoy this big time.”

Later while snuggling the bunnies, Peck recalled owning cows but never milking them.

The first year of the After Fair, Aller faked it. She brought vegetables from her own garden and crafts items of friends. The small display was a hit, and nobody got sick or stuck in the gravel.

The next year fair manager Rhonda Livingstone got involved, and the idea took off. The After Fair gained national attention twice, winning the International Association of Fairs and Expositions contest in the category for non-fair agricultural event or program. In 2014, Bonner County beat out fairs in Iowa and New York.

Fair week is taxing and exhausting, especially for Livingstone, who works nonstop for weeks with her staff. So the idea of doing one more activity, two days after the fair ended, wasn’t ideal. Livingstone remembers driving to the Bridge feeling irritated. Yet once she saw the residents’ grateful response, she was overcome with emotion. She cried the whole way home, joyful that these old-timers got to enjoy the fair.

“It’s my favorite thing, ever,” Livingstone said in between visiting with residents and showing them crafts made by kids.

On Tuesday, the activity room was filled – tables of decorated cakes, pickles and jams, photography, paintings, leather work and even a model ship. There were baskets of squash and zucchini and vegetables from a spectacular growing year that the Bridge cook will use for a fair dinner later this week. 

In previous years when lots of cut flowers were on display, the Bridge decorated dinner tables. 

For three hours, residents ate molasses cookies, looked at the exhibits and ribbons and petted the animals. They reminisced about their years at the fair, the hard work, the joy.

Delay, the former 4-H leader, pointed out that a sheath of oats got a red ribbon because the shafts were too short. She suggested that the grain be mowed differently next year.

Hunter Warwick, 7, brought his black bunny Shadow. He was eager to show the rabbit to Margaret Toomey, a family friend who lives at the Bridge. Toomey admired Shadow, yet seemed just as happy to see Hunter and the other kids.

“Isn’t that something,” she said.