2019 Country Fair & Gathering

Thank you to everyone who came out to the Country Fair and Gathering on Saturday. It was a beautiful day in Sedalia!

The 2019 Country Fair was blessed with moderate temperatures and a bit of a breeze, a nice summer day for horse show exhibitors, demonstrators, and fairgoers alike to enjoy being outdoors in the country. The arena rumbled under wagons, the hoofs of big black horses, and the scampering feet of dogs and the sheep they herded.

Musicians Catherine the Great, East Bound, and unannounced guests Dale and Robert Overstreet kept the pavilion upbeat and didn’t seem to bother the chickens at all. FFA brought sheep and goats, sold mums, and generally added to the life of the Fair.

LT Skinnell demonstrated forging, and vendors offered good food and a wide variety of merchandise. Doug MacLeod set up his camp with its ancient artifacts in the lower meadow, showing kids how to weave yucca into mats and to use primitive bows and arrows. Mark Angelini and John Fluger carved wood into spoons and animals. Children wore out the playground and ate Italian ice. The Pollinator Garden hummed brightly in its beds, and the Angelinis explained plans for next year’s sustainable vegetable garden.

2020 will be the first year in many decades that hemp can be legally grown in Virginia. Bedford County Extension Agent Scott Baker,  and Chris Wood, who grows hemp for oil at Peaks of Otter Hemp, addressed agricultural issues of growing hemp for fiber and medicinal oil.

Doris McCabe thanked the Al Stroobants Foundation for the solar micro-grid it awarded the Sedalia Center, and Mark Howard and Shane Tyree of Powermark Electrical, who designed and installed it, gave impromptu tours of the system. 2019 is the 60th anniversary of the construction of the Counter Ridge School, the original incarnation of the Sedalia Center. Alumna Deborah Reeves spoke of the history of black children’s education in northern Bedford County, reminding the audience of the milestone that the building of Counter Ridge marked: a school with indoor plumbing, a cafeteria, and a kitchen where the lunch ladies cooked from scratch. A school that gave a child a sense of dignity and the opportunity to advance. And gave the Sedalia Center a history it can be proud of.