Bright lights from carnival rides, pig squeals in the animal barn and a gigantic draft horse were all new for 4-month-old Bruno Brigantino, who attended the first San Benito County Fair of his life Friday.
The event ran last Friday through Sunday and introduced attendees of all ages to the best of the county’s agriculture, livestock and domestic crafts.
“I like seeing the animals,” said Bruno’s mother, Marissa Brigantino, 26, who donned a jeans dress and cowboy boots for the occasion. “I didn’t grow up around a farming community, so it’s fun to see the culture of it.”
Just steps away in the livestock area on opening day, Hollister resident Emily Drost, 11, sprayed her pig with water to keep him from overheating as temperatures approached the high 90s. Her hog “Augustus Waters” was named after the main character in the movie “The Fault in Our Stars,” which appeared in theaters earlier this year.
Just a few hours earlier at 10 a.m., Drost and her pig had placed fourth in her market class. As she stood by her pig in the barn, she wore the typical uniform of a 4-H competitor, sporting a green neck scarf, white jeans and a white shirt. Keeping the mostly white uniform clean was an ongoing challenge Friday.
“It’s really hard,” she said. “It’s mainly hard because we have to deal with pigs and they get their nose in the dirt and it gets all over.”
Drost’s hog was one of 198 pigs at the fair, a higher number than what Drost’s mother, Brooke, remembers from prior years.
“This is the most we’ve had in a long time,” Brooke said. “It’s definitely one of the most popular species to show at the fair.”
A short walk from the animal barns area, other county residents showed off their homegrown produce in displays of tomatoes, pomegranates, apples and jalapeños on hay bales in the outdoor agriculture section of the fair.
The giant pumpkin competition featured a prize-winning 339-pound squash grown by Bryan Colman, taking the top award in the adult division. Next to the giant sat a smaller 7-pound pumpkin – the top placing pumpkin in the junior division – which was grown by Hollister youth Joey Guerrero.
For some, the fair was about agriculture and animals but for others, it was all about the carnival rides. When Hollister resident Karen Nelson, 28, attended the fair with her boyfriend Frank Gunnels, 30, and her nephew Adrian Santos, 7, the rides were their first stop. For Nelson, attending the county fair was a walk down memory lane.
“They bring back great memories of my childhood,” Nelson said. “I remember the rides. And, the carnies were a lot different.”
Nelson remembered being able to talk the ride operators into letting her on the “big kid” rides, even when she didn’t meet the height requirements. That doesn’t happen now, she said.
As Santos climbed out of a spinning teacup after whirling around for a few minutes, he struggled to walk in a straight line, but pronounced the ride “good.”
“It was dizzy and when I looked up, it looked like I was flying off the thing,” he said.
While Santos checked out the rides, quilters in the nearby fair building were whirling the gears of a sewing machine as they put together pieces for a quilt at a demonstration table run by the Pinnacle Quilters club.
“I love that it’s a small-town fair,” said quilter Irene Towler, 60, as she touched the strips of red, white and blue cloth, which would eventually form a quilt in the design of an American flag. “I see things people have entered and I know the people and their kids.”
When Towler moved to San Benito County 15 years ago, she found a sense of community through a quilting class in Hollister where she met the network of “creative, wonderful people” she now calls friends.
For Towler, quilts are a big part of the fair’s charm. But so is the sense of community she feels when she recognizes the names of competitors and marvels at how their style has developed over the years.
“Every quilt is just like a story,” she said. “There’s so much love and learning experience.”
Look back for more photos.
