Start your engines! This year the Pass Creek Fall Fair introduces lawn mower races and a motorcycle show and shine.
The 21st annual Pass Creek Fall Fair will be held at the Pass Creek fairgrounds, Sept. 24 and 25. Fair hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, and admission is $5, with free entry for kids under six.
New this year are lawn mower races, taking place on both days, and the first annual Pass Creek Fall Fair Motorcycle Shine & Show. To learn how to enter the shine and show, visit passcreekfair.com. The entry fee for the show is $10 and includes entry to the fair and breakfast. Also new this year, there will be horse-drawn carriage rides on both days and a free family dance on Saturday night, 5-7 p.m., featuring the band Blue Crush.
Returning to the fair this year is the Global FMX Extreme Motor Cross Show, with three shows daily.
“It’ll be an upgraded show this year. It will be all backflip tricks, which are really quite dangerous and extreme, so it will be a really exciting show,” says Donna Smith, president of the Pass Creek Fall Fair.
Dirty Diggers will also return, giving kids the chance to ride on heavy machinery.
There’s also a free shuttle again, running between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on both days, with pickups at both the Castlegar Complex and the museum. Parking at the fairgrounds will be $2 per vehicle.
“We’re trying to get people to think green and take the shuttle,” says Smith.
As always, community members are invited to enter their produce, crafts, poultry, rabbits, beer, wine and other homemade or homegrown or raised goods. There are separate categories for youth five to eight years old, nine to 12, and 13-17.
Prizes for the youth sections are $5 for first place, $3 for second place, and $2 for third place, and there will a grand aggregate plaque for each age group. For the adult categories, $50 grand aggregate prizes will be awarded to the exhibitor with the highest points in each category. First, second and third place in each section will also receive ribbons and there will be grand aggregate ribbons as well.
“It’ll be, I think, bigger and better this year because of the prize money,” says Smith. “We know with fruits and vegetables that it’s been an early year, so we’re hoping that people will enter their canning, baking, photography, woodworking, the beer and wine, the crafts, the sewing, the spinning. There’s lots of categories that are no weather related that people could enter in.”
The awards ceremony will be held on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. down by the Motor Cross Show.
Those wishing to enter the exhibitions can either pre-register by downloading the Pass Creek Fall Fair booklet at passcreekfair.com, printing the entry form on page 45 and sending it to r_dsmith@shaw.ca by Sept. 21, or fill out the paperwork when they drop off their entries at the fairgrounds on Relkoff Rd. in Robson. Drop off will be Wednesday and Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Friday from 8 a.m. until the drop off deadline at 4 p.m. There is no cost for entry.
“They have to get it in by four o’clock on Friday because our judges come in at 5:30 p.m. and then everybody is judged, and the ribbons and prize money and everything gets organized Friday night,” says Smith.
Entries can’t be picked up again until after 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 25.