By: Mike Orso
More improvements to facilities housing animals at the McHenry County Fair recently took place with additional ones planned as this year’s fair gets underway in Woodstock.
Club Town Inc. (CTI), the non-profit group which owns and maintains many of the barns and show rings adjacent to the fairgrounds, recently added a new cement floor to half of one barn that will house swine. The group also added brand new pens, including 28 additional ones, all for children and teenagers participating in 4H and exhibiting at the fair.
“Last year we ran out of pens and we had to have temporary ones,” said Alan Ainger, Hebron-area dairy farmer and president of CTI. “The community rallied behind us and it was something they wanted to see done. So, we got it done.”
The latest effort to improve facilities started informally at last year’s fair, when crowds attending a popular Friday night swine showmanship competition with adult participants passed around a hat to see what could be raised to start improvements. Ainger said the initial effort yielded approximately $1,000.
“We spent $20,000 for the pens,” said Ainger. “There was 36 yards of cement that was donated.”
4H youth participants use the facilities to show several species of animals they raise, including beef cattle, dairy cattle, cats, dogs, goats, horses, poultry, sheep and swine. Ainger said space to house swine that children and teens raise has been in short supply since the species proves to be popular every year.
“The kids can get a (4H swine) project when they are getting out of school in the spring and then by the time they go back to school, the project is done,” said Ainger. “It doesn’t interfere too much with sports or any of that.”
In recent months, CTI launched a formal fundraising effort ahead of this year’s fair in Woodstock, with hopes to raise more funds through it and the month of August. During the most recent effort, more than 25 families, individuals, businesses and other entities helped push total contributions to approximately $18,000 in donations that will be used toward the building and grounds improvements.
“We’re trying to make improvements to the livestock barns that we own,” said Ainger. “It maintains a place for the 4H kids to have a fair.”
Farm leaders and others created CTI in the late 1940s. It helped reinvigorate the county fair at the corners of Route 47 and Country Club Rd. in Woodstock. The fair grandstand and some other buildings have since moved to the other side of the CTI livestock barns after developers purchased some of the land from the county in the early 2000s. The livestock barns remained, with other improvements in recent years that have included three new roofs, installation of a paved road between barns, and some barn ceiling fans.
“I like working with different people and asking for help,” said Ainger, who serves with six other volunteer directors representing the Illinois Association of Home and Community Education and the McHenry County Farm Bureau (MCFB) on the CTI board. “That’s what you can’t be afraid to do, especially with jobs like this. We want to make the fair better all the time.”
Other non-voting directors and advisers serving the CTI board include representatives of 4H, the McHenry County Fair and MCFB, which helps manage Club Town Inc.
Ainger has children who will be participating in the fair in addition to many fond memories of past fairs he, other family members, and friends have competed in with their poultry, livestock and other animals they raised.
“They got a campground out there now and everybody brings campers,” he said. “I was always in the dairy barn. There was a huge group of us that would stay right in the barns. That was the highlight of the fair.”
For more information about Club Town and how you and others can help with the effort to maintain the buildings, click here.
Alan Ainger, president of Club Town Inc., surveys some of the recent improvements to group’s barns and grounds adjacent to the McHenry County Fairgrounds. “We have a list of things that we want to do,” he said. “We just need to prioritize them now.”
The sounds of grinders and colliding steel could be heard throughout the barns adjacent to the McHenry County Fairgrounds on a recent weekday evening when Club Town and 4H supporters helped install animal pens and finish some of the most recent building improvements.
Some 4Hers and others got a look at some of the livestock and poultry building and grounds improvements on a recent weekday evening ahead of the McHenry County Fair.
