Family fun on the farm

Tony Dodero

In my 15-year association with this newspaper, I’ve made attending

the Orange County Fair part of my annual repertoire.

This year was no different as I packed up the family last Sunday

and moseyed on down for an afternoon of food and fun.

The way it started, though, I wasn’t so sure how it would turn

out.

My wife and I got a clue as to how sheltered our city-folk kids

are the minute we walked into the fair at the northwest entrance near

Arlington Street.

“C’mon kids, let’s go see the goats and pigs,” I said, pointing

out the petting zoo just past the entrance.

I bought two cups of feed, took my brood -- Danielle, Kristen and

Nathan -- and walked into the petting zoo area.

Big mistake.

My girls were petrified of the goats as the creatures chewed on

their clothes and sniffed the kids, looking for some grub. My son

wasn’t so bad, but watching his sisters freak out wasn’t reassuring.

I could see he wanted out.

Even pointing out a doe-eyed deer and calling it Rudolph didn’t

help. They wanted no part of these hoofed creatures.

So we decided to try the kiddie carnival rides up a pace or two,

instead.

First stop was the water bumper boats. They looked harmless

enough, basically a motorized rubber inner tube inside an

above-ground wading pool.

We gave the operators some ride tickets and put the girls inside

the boats. Kristen immediately burst into tears and as we rushed over

to get her out of the pool, I heard Danielle screaming, “Dada, Dada.”

There she was at the opposite end of the pool with a look of

terror on her face. She somehow managed to lock her boat into a

perpetual, splashing spin cycle.

The ride operator waded toward her, grabbed her out of the boat

and handed her back in her mother’s arms.

Later, things did get better. Danielle bravely went down the big

slide and we went on a few more rides, with me sitting next to the

kids on most of them.

Before long, it was not my kids but me freaking out as we rode the

spinning hot air balloons, Ferris wheel and Free Fall rides.

“It goes down and up,” said Kristen excitedly.

Yeah it does.

After my stomach settled, we had a nice dinner at the Chuck Wagon

restaurant, a fair staple for years. From there, we took a stroll to

the Centennial Farm.

We saw a baby calf, baby piglets, baby chickens, roosters, a cow

being milked, horses, llamas, you name it. We walked down the rows of

crops: broccoli, corn, squash, tomatoes and more. And we marveled at

how weird Brussels sprouts look.

And we saw something else that hit closer to home. You see the

fair really is a family affair. And mine isn’t the only family from

the Daily Pilot pretending to be country folk this year.

What we also saw were some of the biggest, juiciest looking

cucumbers this side of Iowa, grown by Julian and Nolan Dunn, the two

sons of Daily Pilot Sports Editor Rich Dunn.

Nolan took Second Place in the cucumber growing competition and

Julian nabbed the Honorable Mention trophy. And Dad and mom, Andrea

couldn’t be prouder.

So I asked them to tell me the secret of growing prize-winning

cucumbers and here came the answer from Andrea:

“Centennial Farm is a favorite outing for my two boys and me. It

exposes them to the workings of a farm, to agriculture and farm

animals and gives them some healthy outdoor time running from one pen

to the next. My 4-year-old, Nolan, likes to pretend he is a farmer

and will often come home inspired by what he saw at Centennial Farm,

start digging and ‘tilling the soil’ of our yard.

We had a 5 feet by 8 feet section of dirt next to the driveway

where we had trouble growing much of anything. It got plenty of sun,

but our decorative plants didn’t do well there. We had a packet of

radish seeds from the farm and bought some more seed packets at

WalMart and decided to transform that sunny patch of dirt into our

own “Dunn Family Farm.”

With a 22-month-old boy who enjoys darting toward the street and

testing his mom, we don’t have lengthy opportunities to prepare the

soil much less groom our garden, but one morning Nolan and I had a

few minutes where we could focus on our ‘farm’ and sow a few rows

with seeds. Nolan proved to be very efficient with his time as he

simply dumped entire seed packets into the same spot and then was off

to another project in his busy workday.

Later that afternoon, I managed to spread out the seeds, water

them and crossed my fingers hoping a few would sprout.

Fortunately, a week or so later and despite our intermittent

watering and questionable fertilizing schedule, we saw several

shoots, and then more, and our excitement grew. It turns out, that of

all the seeds we planted (beans, lettuce, radish, celery, cucumber,

watermelon, carrots, squash and sunflower), the squash and cucumber

thrived. The cucumber did especially well and thus far this summer we

have been able to grow about 10 very large cucumbers.

Around the time when our first ‘crop’ matured, and we had six

good-sized cucumbers, my husband, Rich, suggested we enter them in

the Orange County Fair. I loved the idea and so last week, we entered

three under Nolan’s name and three under Julian’s name. After

submitting our entries -- which is done also at Centennial Farm -- we

enjoyed our early-morning walk through the farm.

The next day, and on a whim, we decided to try and enter the

opening day of the fair during the 10 a.m. -- 11 a.m. hour when admission is free. We passed through the gates in the nick of time

Anyway, our highlight was visiting the vegetable competition section,

which, I should note, seemed to be among the busier places I observed

that morning. I had a feeling that our entries would get at least a

ribbon just for participating because it seemed that in years past

just about every competition entry had a ribbon.

Indeed, Julian’s received an honorable mention and Nolan’s

cucumbers got second place. I have to say that the whole experience

of starting our own garden, managing to have at least one plant

survive and even thrive with surprisingly impressive results, and

then participating in the county fair has been a really fun one for

us. “

As you can see, kids are easy to please and the fair is an easy

place to please them.

So I asked my girls, who went from terrified city slickers to

old-hand cow pokes in one day, what was your favorite part of the

fair?

“The baby calf,” said Kristen, “and the chicks.”

“How about the piglets?” said Danielle.

Yeah, how about those piglets? It wouldn’t be a fair without them.

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He may be reached at (714) 966-4608

or by e-mail at tony.dodero@latimes.com.