The Giant Pumpkin Festival - Part 2

I was attending the Giant Pumpkin Festival at the St. Lawrence County fairgrounds in Gouverneur, New York (see Part 1, posted yesterday) and walking along a row of vendors:

There were handcrafted birdhouses and other wood crafts:

Signs and wooden pumpkin boxes:

And of course - more pumpkins. No giants yet, though:

I walked over to see the crane which would drop the giant pumpkin (filled with numbered golf balls) at 3:00. I wouldn't be there long enough to see it drop, though:

I walked by the chicken barbecue. It sure smelled good!

And then I entered the barn with the giant pumpkins. There were a few, but that's when I realized I shouldn't have arrived on the morning of opening day because many of the giant pumpkins hadn't yet arrived. But there were some, so I walked around to see them:

Outside the barn, a big (but certainly not giant) pumpkin had just arrived and was being unloaded and tagged with the grower's name:

A forklift hauled the pumpkins into the barn:

These were some seriously big pumpkins and I'd sure be proud to have grown one of them. But I missed seeing the super-giants, which hadn't yet arrived:

Well, these two were pretty darn big, but there were surely much bigger ones coming:

I didn't stay long, but I enjoyed the rural geniality. Next year I'll go later in the day:

Small Animal Swap Meet In Louisville, New York

The Northern New York Poultry Club morphed, over the winter, into something called Country Thyme Living. There were several changes of name and purges of former members. I kept my head down until it was over and was eager to attend their first function this spring, a swap meet. Last autumn's swap meet was filled with small animals - chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and rabbits:

This year's swap meet, however, had only five people with animals. There were three tailgate venders outdoors, including this one with lovely Roller Pigeons. I was still hoping to find some Fantail Pigeons, but this man had none:

This woman had crossbred roosters and two Turkens (bald chickens). I suspected that neither would be hot commodities, but I kept my opinion to myself and wished her well:

Three of her roosters. They were handsome birds, but people with chickens usually already have more roosters than they know what to do with:

The third and final outdoor vender had three cages of chickens. I thought the white ones might be Phoenix because of their long tails, but the guys were so busy chatting that I never got to ask. The little black hens in the center were a breed unknown to me:

I went inside to see what else they had and was surprised to find that it was a hockey arena. This is far northern New York, almost Canada, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find that hockey is a major sport here:

There were vender's booths set up everywhere. This one had plants for sale:

A woodcraft booth:

Birdhouses and lamps made of birdhouses:

Wool, yarn and wool crafts, with a woman spinning:

Alpaca wool and crafts. I wished I'd have looked at this one more carefully:

There were only two tables with animals. One had fish, mice and hamsters. And this one had baby chicks and Ameraucana (a chicken breed which lays blue and green eggs) eggs, sold by the dozen. But that was about all there was to see, so I walked back out to my car and headed for home: