Western NY Meets The Archers*

  It was Cattaraugus County Fair and I was volunteering at the Ag Discovery Stand

Not that I know much about American agriculture but I can hand out stickers and arrange pink plastic pigs in the bran tub (in America, it's a corn tub), with the best of them.  Friday was Miniature Horse Day at our stall.

And here's Cal, with his star, Easter Lilly.

She can play dead, do the steal-the-blanket trick and hop over a few jumps.

But whatever you do, don't call her a pony.

Her friend, Impression, gets a pedi.

There were larger equines too. Watching some of the classes, you'd almost think yourself back in England, if it wasn't for the leather straps they wear just below their knees. Does that date from a time before lycra?

    There were some other differences.. Like the saddle-seat class. I just love that get-up....

Likewise the show-horse class and the ladies' sidesaddle..........

Someone lost a shoe but luckily the ferrier was on hand. Not farrier but ferrier, which perhaps, like many American expressions, is truer to the original word...

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the showground,  there was a use for that extra-large T-shirt.

 And someone else got a last-minute trim...

Mwah mwah

 Wait a minute, am I at the right show?

 Much more to come - including racing piglets and the remains of a demolition derby. Watch this space.

* American readers might not know this but The Archers is a popular radio soap about life in an English village.