Van Buren Fair Cancelled

This year’s Van Buren County Fair has been cancelled.

Fair Board President Lesa Bouldin said the fair officials are trying to find ways to showcase some of the fair events later this fall. She said finding ways to still hold activities is important in smaller communities.

“It’s just a small community and you don’t have a whole lot of activities to look forward to,” Bouldin said. “We already cancelled the homecoming, and that tore a lot of people up, and hoping to go ahead with the fair as planned, and it’s just going to be hard to do it and do it safely.”

Even with the cancellation, Bouldin said the fair board will try to stay busy over the coming months.

“We have a car show scheduled already,” Bouldin said. “We’re going to go ahead with the car show and build on that. Some of the other events like the horse show and the things we usually have during the week like the chainsaw challenge, we’re going to do as fundraisers. We don’t have dates for that yet, but it will be later on in the fall.”

Bouldin said the Van Buren County has kept COVID numbers low during the pandemic. She said keeping those numbers low was one reason the August fair was cancelled.

“We had a low COVID count, and, of course, we want to keep it that way,” Bouldin said. “We want people to come to Van Buren County, and we want to encourage that, but we weren’t sure if now was the right time to promote activities in the county.”

One of the difficult things for her, Bouldin said, is cancelling the fair means not seeing a lot of the people she sees every year.

“We’re people people up here,” Bouldin said. “We’re huggers, and it’s been hard on us. You just don’t want people to be depressed. The Fair Board is going to do everything it can to find some fun things to do that can get everybody involved.”