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Sunshine Fair
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Sunshine Fair features farm animals and fun
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Photographer:
Peter Barber
Andrea Ryder, 15, of Sloansville, plays with her goat Peanut at the Sunshine Fair in Cobleskill on Tuesday.
COBLESKILL — John Pfitzer came a long way to visit the Schoharie County Sunshine Fair. The 22-year-old from Stuttgart, Germany, was enjoying some manufactured breeze from the big fan under the Ox Kill Farm’s tarp as he watched hitches of big draft horses compete at pulling fancy wagons in the nearby ring. Pfitzer arrived three days ago from Germany to spend 10 weeks as an intern working on Gene and Vicky McCaffrey’s horse-breeding farm in the Gallupville area of the town of Wright. Interns are a regular summer thing at the 180-acre horse, cattle and hay farm. Liza Matlock, 15, is also working with horses at the farm as well as showing them at the fair, but she only had to come a few miles, from Berne in Albany County. Vicky McCaffrey is a small-animal veterinarian who works with the Latham Veterinary Hospital. Gene is a retired state wildlife biologist. Both Matlock and Pfitzer said they hope to go into some form of veterinary work too so it seems a nice fit for a summer job. “I’d like to be a large-animal vet,” Matlock said. Matlock, a Berne-Knox-Westerlo High School junior, worked at the farm last summer too. For Pfitzer it’s a first. He’s a city resident, but studies agriculture sciences at Hohenheim University in Germany. He found the job at Ox Kill on the Internet. The fair opened for a six-day run Tuesday. Draft horse hitches were just one of the events where a variety of livestock raisers and 4-Hers get a chance to show off their animals and skills. For non-farm fans, midway rides, crafts, fried dough, sausages and the like offer a host of other summer diversions. But in the shade of the Ox Kill Farm tarp, there was time to relax Tuesday afternoon after some morning competitions. A string of mostly blue ribbons adorned the farm’s big red F-350 Ford pickup as a group of friends chatted nearby. “I find the draft horse people more homey,” said Matlock. The horses have a relaxed attitude too, she said. “They’re a lot calmer than light horses.” Light, the big Shires are not. The relatively rare and quite large breed is what the McCaffeys have specialized in for 30 years or so. “We’ve taken them all over,” Vicky McCaffey said, including a 100th anniversary event for the breed in Blackfoot, Idaho. That was in 1985, noted Gene McCaffey. “He’s my numbers person,” Vicky McCaffey said. A champion stallion stands 19 hands high, she said. A hand is four inches, so 19 inches is 6 feet, 4 inches. They weigh 2,000 pounds,” Vicky McCaffey said. “Real horses weigh a ton,” quipped Chad Bauder, of Clifton Park. Raised in Westerlo, Bauder, 26, was another Ox Kill intern 16 years ago. On the other side of the fairgrounds, the 4-H dairy barns were filled with boys and girls also getting an early start in agriculture as they washed and fed their animals. “It’s a lot of work, and a lot of fun,” said 11-year-old Chris DeSormeau, of Lawyersville. The Golding Middle School student was caring for his two Aryshire cows. A member of the local 4-H Club called the Schoharie County Milking Maniacs, DeSormeau said he keeps his animals at a neighbor’s farm “right down the road.” He plans to show them in competition today. Harness races, with trotters going twice around the half-mile track, will be a highlight today at the fair. The New York Sire Stakes program is scheduled to begin at noon with a purse of more than $20,000, according to fair board President Doug Cater. Later in the afternoon, the nationally ranked CKG Billings Amateur Driver Racing Series includes harness drivers building points toward the fall finals in New Jersey. Today is also children and seniors day, with youth 18 and under admitted free and people age 62 and older getting a $2 discount off admission, Both specials end at 6 p.m. An ecumenical church service will begin at 11 a.m. in the party tent theater. A demolition derby is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the grandstand ring. The fair runs through Sunday. Gates open at 8 a.m., with most exhibits open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Midway rides generally run from noon to 10 p.m.; there will be reduced ticket prices today from 1 to 6 p.m.
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November 21, 2008
