SHELBURNE — The annual Shelburne Grange Fair has been canceled for a second year in a row, with organizers citing pandemic concerns as a prime reason.
The fair, planned to be held on Saturday, Aug. 27, also coincided this year with the popular Green River Festival in Greenfield, creating a conflict for some volunteers and fair-goers, according to Roland Giguere, president of the Shelburne Grange.
“The decision was made before everything started opening up, for one thing,” Giguere said of the planning committee’s late-May decision to cancel. “There were so many questions, we decided not to do it.”
When the committee was making decisions, he noted, it didn’t seem like the pandemic was heading in a positive direction fast enough to solidify plans for the event this year.
“There were various things we were discussing and trying to brainstorm, and we just couldn’t come up with something satisfactory,” Giguere recalled. “So we decided to just, next year, come back full force and put on an excellent fair.”
The decision to not hold the Shelburne Grange Fair this year was met with disappointment from some committee members, though all ultimately decided that safety was of the utmost priority.
“People need to be comfortable with pandemic issues, and our small Grange group was having a lot of concerns about that,” said Grange Program Director Barbara Giguere, Roland’s wife.
Keeping families safe was part of that priority, as the fair is supposed to be a family event. Since children aren’t yet able to be vaccinated, Barbara Giguere said, another part of the decision was ensuring children and their families weren’t put at risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19.
She added that getting people to volunteer during a pandemic was difficult, and that adhering to the fair’s traditions could also not easily be met under such regulations.
“The idea of a grange fair is to support agriculture, so the hall exhibits are a really important part of the fair,” Barbara Giguere explained. Organizers discussed plenty of options — a fair with an outdoor hall, or a fair without a hall at all — but felt few of them would stay true to the agricultural heritage of the event.
“We decided that doing a fair without an exhibit hall wasn’t what we wanted to promote,” she said. “What we wanted to promote was agriculture.”
Both Gigueres reported that the planning committee is hoping for the traditional hall exhibits, entertainment and barbecue to be up and running when next year’s Shelburne Grange Fair comes around.