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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It was a picture perfect day to kick-off the Kentucky State Fair!
The Kentucky State Fair lasts 11 days and you may need every single one of them to enjoy every attraction scheduled this year. On opening day, Spectrum News 1 took in as many as possible, but that’s a tall task!
An opening day favorite certainly had to be Newton’s Homemade Ice Cream from Elizabethtown, which features two century-old engines churning four wooden buckets of cream. “Oh yeah, it’s a John Deere hit and miss engine. We’ve got them set up,” Charlie Fields explains. The unmistakable popping and clicking of the gasoline engines is a great way to attract onlookers as Fields can crank out 20 lbs of ice cream in short order. “Once the ice cream starts getting thick, this here wheel will start slowing down. You can almost count the spokes on it,” Fields said.
Newton’s Homemade Ice Cream offers about a dozen flavors. Of course, if you want to work your way up to dessert, your options are endless at the fair. The fair staples of corn dogs and funnel cake and sausages are abundant, to say the least. The doughnut bun hamburgers are back, too.
Inside the exhibition halls, the world is your oyster with all matter of moos and merch to be had.
Kim Mason is one half of “Custom Lawn Jockeys,” a Tennessee-based business that hand paints the popular lawn ornament.
“The Kentucky Derby! That’s where we got our idea,” Mason explains. The booming side-hustle started in 2018 when husband and all-of-a-sudden painter Buddy Mason painted his own lawn jockey and then posted his handiwork on Facebook. It took off from there. “And a few days later I started getting orders and within about two months I had gotten maybe two handfuls of orders and I thought, ‘Maybe there is something to this’ and five years later here we are!”
The fair has more attractions than you can shake a stick at. To explore all your options, check out the full schedule here.