Jasper County Fair is still committed to celebrating kids, family, agriculture

Erlene Leonard said working the Jasper County Fair is a lot like running a family farm. It’s more than just a job, it’s a way of life. Without the next generation to take it over, it could fold. At almost 170 years old, the fair is still thriving and growing and cultivating the next generations who will one day take it over.

“That’s our future,” Leonard said.

Ask anyone who works the county fair and they’ll say the same thing Leonard told me: “It’s all about the kids.” The longtime fair volunteer joked that she has been involved with the Jasper County Fair since it started. But she estimated her family participated or worked at the fair for almost that amount of time.

“I want to say it was 1983 when I first started down there,” Leonard, 74, said. “…I’ve got a family farm that’s been in for 150 years.”

Her family is now intertwined with the fair experience. The Brice Leonard Supreme Showmanship Contest launched in 2014 and was named after her son, who died in 2010 at age 33. Brice had a passion for showing animals and had always wanted to see a supreme showmanship contest at the county fair.

It’s only 11 years in but the contest has already become a county fair tradition. The fair only continues to grow and evolve, adding new attractions or facilities like the Hoop Building that help preserve the event for the next wave of kids to use it. Leonard said the current fair board has focused on improvements.

“They’ve been able to get grant money that we couldn’t get our little hands on years ago,” she said. “We basically functioned off of state aid, which was in the appropriations bill in the legislature and what rental money that we got. Now funds have really opened up in different areas. It’s made a change.”

Rhonda Guy, who is also a longtime volunteer for the Jasper County Fair, is somewhat of a fair historian. She has been active in the fair ever since she was 11 years old and has served in many capacities. While many things have changed about the fair since it was established in the 1850s, one thing hasn’t.

“The people of Jasper County — I really believe that,” she said. “It’s amazing how many folks show up from year to year to year just to come and see the fair again … I’ve been around with the people and working with the board long enough that folks told me about their days at the county fair when it was here in Newton.”

While Guy, 67, also agrees to an extent that the fair is all about the kids, she also stressed that it is about families and promoting Jasper County’s agricultural heritage. When the fair first started, it wasn’t a 4-H show or an FFA show, because neither were around back then. It was a family fair.

Competitive events for kids and adults kept people coming back every year. Whether it was livestock, cooking or sewing contests, these competitions and projects built the foundation of the county fair, and they are still celebrated to this day. Guy said those family traditions remain strong.

Which is partly why Guy feels so strongly that the fair is about family.

“We’ve been very strong in promoting the entire family,” Guy said. “That’s where our open classes came back in. They had them for years and years and years, and they kind of dropped off because they were struggling with it … Then in the 1980s is when we brought the open classes back in.”

Support from families keeps the Jasper County Fair alive year to year. Guy said they make the fair what it is.

“I love being around the kids, but you gotta get to know their moms and dads, too, and their grandpas and grandmas,” she said.

Guy is one those grandmas. Her youngest granddaughter only has this year and the next to show with the county fair. The cycle of life is coming around again, she said. It is a struggle coming to grips with that some days. Still, she is looking to see her granddaughter show and hopefully move on to the Iowa State Fair.

“She’ll be alright and Grandma is just going to have to slow down a bit more than she wants to,” Guy said.

If all goes well, the next generation will be ready to either take the reins or shoulder more responsibilities. Passing the torch so that families and kids and agriculture is celebrated for another 170 years.