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The 173rd Mercer County Fair continues to take shape this week as 4-H exhibitors and food vendors continue to prepare.
CELINA - It takes a virtual army of people to pull off a successful county fair, from the participants and producers to the vendors, performers, officials, volunteers and fairgoers of all stripes.
Though largely unseen by fairgoers, the Ohio Department of Agriculture is among the key players responsible for helping fair boards and staff protect the public and uphold regulations for a safe, enjoyable event.
In fact, ODA helps oversee Ohio's 94 county and independent fairs, ODA Director Brian Baldridge told The Daily Standard in a phone interview last week while he was on site at the Ohio State Fair, which concluded Sunday evening.
"Our number varies because we're kind of a lot behind the scenes, whether it's our animal health division working with the check-ins and our state vets, or weights and measures," Baldridge said about ODA's presence at the Ohio State Fair. "We have folks … checking scales for consumers who are buying, for example, candy, making sure a pound is a pound. We have our ride safety folks."
ODA personnel lend their expertise to county and independent fairs, both in person and via a continual line of communication.
ODA's Division of Amusement Ride Safety will be in Celina on Wednesday to verify amusement rides are working properly and safe for the droves of people who will descend on the Mercer County Fairgrounds, starting Thursday.
Inspectors will also closely examine darts, basketballs and other components of midway games of skills to make sure they're not "crooked."
"They will be here Wednesday and Thursday," fair manager Cara Muhlenkamp said. "That was part of the reason we moved (the fair) up a day was to give the ride inspectors more time and to give the ride company more time to get everything set up and just give them more adequate time to get everything done."
The Ohio Department of Agriculture will inspect rides at the Mercer County Fair, which gets underway Thursday. ODA also assists county and independent fairs in other ways, such as providing resources related to animal health and safety.
The inspectors, Baldridge said, evaluate rides in the areas of structural integrity, safety systems, signage and general operation, making sure they follow the manufacturer's specifications and recommendations.
"We want to make sure that they have enough time to properly set up, follow those manufacturer guidelines, and then we can go ahead and approve those rides, give them the check-the-box per se to make sure that that ride has been checked by the Ohio Department of Agriculture and is ready to go," he said.
Baldridge asserts that Ohio's ride inspections are among the strongest in the nation. Last year alone, ODA completed mored than 5,700 inspections on more than 3,000 rides.
"Ohio has some of the highest regulations for ride companies," he said. "If they're a company in Ohio, obviously they're following those guidelines when they're setting up at county fairs, independent fairs, streets fairs, wherever that might be."
"Our standards are very high because we believe in safety for the folks in Ohio, our families that are going to these fairs and enjoying these rides, and also folks coming in from out of state," he said. "We want everybody to have a great time, but a safe time."
For about two decades, the Mercer County Fair has contracted ride vendor Poor Jack's Amusements, based in Milton, Indiana.
"They are one of the best in the industry," Muhlenkamp said of Poor Jack's, noting the company provides high-quality, safe rides. "It's a family-owned company just out of Indiana, and they're fantastic to work with and they are always excited to be here."
The state's inspectors will also turn their eyes to midway games of skill and side shows to see if they're on the up and up. They conduct more than 7,000 concession inspections annually.
The agency follows "very prescriptive rules," to confirm fair play, David Miran, ODA's deputy director of regulatory programs, told the newspaper in 2023.
"For a three-point shot, we're checking the rim size. We're checking the air pressure in the basketball," he said. "(For a dart game), we're checking the darts to make sure that they're straight and level. We only allow a particular kind of darts that the feathers can't be damaged."
The 173rd Mercer County Fair continues to take shape this week as 4-H exhibitors and food vendors continue to prepare.
Veterans and inspectors with ODA's Division of Animal Health oversee the health and safety of thousands of animals that are entered into exhibitions at fairs each summer, according to an ODA news release.
Through education and outreach, ODA said its staff work with a variety of partners "to ensure biosecurity measures are in place to prevent animal illness and disease."
"We have a tremendous relationship with our county and independent fairs, those fair boards, those operational folks at our fair boards," Baldridge said. "It's a partnership. We support them. For example, a local fair will contract with a local vet, and that will be their county fair vet during the fair."
This protocol ensures that a qualified veterinarian is accessible to fair participants and producers.
"We work from making sure that we're educating - from our state vet standards - those local veterinarians who are serving in those roles at our county fairs," he continued.
Coldwater Animal Clinic is the local veterinarian at the Mercer County Fair, according to Muhlenkamp.
"We do have a local fair vet that we use, and then we also have to send that information off to the state, so it is in conjunction. They work together, essentially," she explained. "We have guidelines and rules that we have that's put out by the ODA that we have to follow, and they're just here to guide us and help us along when we have questions during the week of the fair."
Muhlenkamp said fair officials will reach out to ODA with questions pertaining to animals throughout fair week.
Animals began arriving to the Mercer County Fairgrounds as early as last week.
ODA maintains a line of communication with local veterinarians during fair week, Baldridge said.
"We work with them on collections of the samples of (animal) champions that are picked, because they are tested after the champions and reserves are picked all across the state to make sure that they are drug-free and so on and so forth," he said. "We have, again, not as many people on the ground at our county fairs, but a lot of support communications are done through the department of agriculture with our county and independent fairs."
At the Ohio State Fair, ODA's Division of Weights and Measures is also tasked with inspecting animal and food scales.
"We want to make sure the scales are certified and no different than if I'm taking cattle to the market to sell livestock down home in southern Ohio," Baldridge said. "We want those scales to be right and we want the scales … to be correct to get those animals in the correct classes so it's a fair and competitive show and equal to everybody."
That responsibility at the Mercer County Fair falls on the Mercer County Auditor's Office.
The popularity of the Ohio State Fair and county and independent fairs remains at high levels. The Ohio State Fair set an attendance record of more than 1 million people in 2023. The Mercer County Fair, too, continues to see growth, setting an attendance record of 98,000 people last year.
"As far as our county and independent fairs, (they're about) that cohesiveness of our local communities, and it's that time of the year that you can come together as a county," Baldridge said. "Our county fairs continue to do great work. We love the partnership because the state fair here in Columbus is only as strong as our 94 county and independent fairs all across the state. It's because those competitors that are competing at a local level have the opportunity to come to Columbus and compete at a state level."
The 173rd Mercer County Fair continues to take shape this week as 4-H exhibitors and food vendors continue to prepare.
