County Fair To Go As Planned in August

By Dave Taylor

The annual Hancock County Fair will go on as scheduled, despite worries over extended closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, said fair board president Franklin Powers.

“We are going ahead with our original plans,” Powers said Tuesday.

The fair will take place August 5-8, with no changes.

“Now if something should happen, even up like to the last week before, we would probably wait till then to cancel it,” he said.

Other county fairs in the area have been canceled, including the Daviess County Fair.

“I’m not sure about Meade County but I think they have too,” he said. “Breckinridge County is talking about it but I don’t know if they did or not.”

But those fairs are scheduled for June and July, he said, which is the main difference.

“I’ve talked to the Department of Agriculture and there’s been several fairs that want to move, but we’ve really got a better date than some of them because some of them are in April and May and June,” he said. “A lot of fairs are in June and July.”

“At this point I do not want to cancel,” he said. “If I was in June I would be afraid, OK.”

Widespread orders for nonessential employees to stay home and for others to isolate in their homes might work to the benefit of the Hancock County Fair, he said, if the timing works out.

If the shelter-in-place orders are lifted soon before the fair, people might be desperate for anything to do outside of the house and come to events like the fair in greater numbers.

“We’re really hoping that this thing will be over and that everybody ‘s going to want something to do,” he said. “But we’re hoping that the economy picks back up where people have got a little money.”