For the hundreds of people watching The Numbskull ram into car No. 10, as billows of smoke rose up from under the battered car’s hood, safety was not the first thing on their minds.
Surrounded by smoke and dust kicked up by the demolition derby, few in the crowd at the Addison County Fair and Field Days wore masks as a guard against a less visible risk: Covid-19.
As cases surge across the state due to the highly contagious Delta variant, the fair started full steam ahead on Tuesday. All of the state’s fairs and festivals were canceled last year because of the pandemic. But with state leaders allowing large events to occur this year, other fairs are set to follow Addison’s lead with few to no restrictions.
“You’ve got to start living sometime,” fairgoer Mark McKiernan, 59, said as he watched the derby cars smash into each other from his vantage point on a hill. His brother, seated in a matching folding armchair by his side, nodded in agreement.
Nine of Vermont’s 14 counties have “high” or “substantial” Covid-19 community transmission by the standards set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Addison remains one of the few with moderate spread — but only by a hair. As of Monday, the county was reporting 48.94 cases per 100,000. The cutoff for substantial transmission is 50 cases. Chittenden and Essex counties to the north have high transmission — defined as more than 100 cases per 100,000 residents — and cases across the state continue to rise, according to the CDC tracker.
Over its five-day run, Addison’s agricultural fair typically draws in 20,000 to 25,000 people from across the county and state, according to Benj Deppman, vice president of the fair’s board of directors. The recent Franklin County Fair brought record crowds, and he hopes Addison’s will do the same.
Although the CDC recommends avoiding large events when possible, it also suggests outdoor events — where the risk of transmission is lowest — are preferable. That includes almost all of the fair’s activities, and organizers require that all of the fair’s directors, paid employees and contractors be vaccinated. Beyond recommendations that unvaccinated fair-goers wear masks indoors, there were no restrictions in place, according to Deppman.
‘Not live in fear’
At the fairground on Tuesday, a message blared across loudspeakers near the entrance every few minutes, welcoming people to the fair and reminding them to take Covid precautions. But many of the fair-goers seemed unbothered.
McKiernan, who was watching the derby with his brother Mike, used to drive in derbies and now makes an annual trip to the Addison Fair. He’s vaccinated, and as healthy as he is, doesn’t worry about breakthrough infections and has stopped wearing masks altogether, he says.
Other fairgoers shared similar sentiments.
“I think people need to get on with their lives and live again and not live in fear all the time,” Melanie Carmichael said as she and her family took shelter from the sweltering heat under one of the music tents near the fair’s entrance.
Carmichael now lives in Crossville, Tennessee, after she sold her Addison dairy farm last summer. She served as the fair’s director in the late 1990s, and her 35-year-old daughter, Allison Carmichael, grew up showing cows in the 4-H Peewee Dairy Show.
The fair is an important cultural event for the residents of Addison County, and Carmichael says farmers in the area measure time against the field days.
“When I first came down here, it was always like, ‘Oh, you’re pregnant. When are you due, before field days or after field days?’” she said. “People live for this fair.”
Fairs like Addison’s also serve as important revenue streams for local businesses.
“We, as a nonprofit, provide so much for the community that’s more than just rides and food and art. We have tremendous economic ties,” said Jeff Bartley, marketing director for the Champlain Valley Exposition.
Ready to proceed
Barring new guidance from the Department of Health, the rest of the state’s fairs and festivals are set to continue with few to no Covid restrictions, according to Jackie Folsom, Vermont Agricultural Fairs and Field Days Association lobbyist and secretary. That includes the 10-day Champlain Valley Fair, set to begin Aug. 27.
About 120,000 people attend the state’s largest fair each year. While the fair will follow all state and federal guidelines, it has every intention of forging ahead this year, according to Bartley.
“There’s no talk about canceling the fair,” he said. “As of right now, we’re not putting any restrictions on the fair.”
The Champlain Valley Exposition took a huge financial hit last year when Covid forced the fairgrounds to shut down. Beyond the annual fair, the fairgrounds is frequently rented for other events, and without that income, the exposition would have been unable to pay its mortgage had its lenders not been willing to renegotiate the terms, according to Executive Director Tim Shea.
The state Legislature allocated $1 million to the state fairs last year, just enough so they could “keep their lights on,” Folsom said.
Among those who benefited from the Addison County Fair’s survival was Scooter Desmond, of Georgia, Vermont, who owns a pretzel and lemonade stands and a corndog stall with his wife. They spend the summers traveling to fairs and festivals around the state and New England and have come to the Addison Fair for more than 20 years.
Events like “Taste of the Fair” — held in place of the Champlain Valley Exposition — kept the business afloat when all of the normal fairs and festivals closed down last summer, but it was tough going.
At the fair on Tuesday, Desmond said he can’t worry about whether fairs later in the summer will be able to run or not. He focuses instead on each pretzel in front of him, deftly slicing a ribbon of dough and twisting it in the air in one fluid motion to form the classic knot. Each pretzel takes him only a couple of seconds, and by the end of the night, he will have made hundreds.
“We all find a way to survive,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story’s photograph captions gave an incorrect town for the fair.