The Waukesha County Fair is where the 4-H youth display their projects and animals. The Waukesha County Fair takes place the third week in July.
4-H is a huge part of the Waukesha County Fair and showing at the Waukesha County Fair is a huge part of 4-H, however, they are separate organizations. (Please don’t be offended if the 4-H office tells you to call the Fair office or vice versa – we don’t know everything about the Fair and they don’t know everything about 4-H.)
As you may have already noticed, 4-H has a bit of a language all it’s own and unfortunately, so does the Fair. So before we go any farther, we’ll define some of the common words/phrases….
- Fair Book – contains the information (rules, entry descriptions, premium amounts, etc.) necessary for entering at the Waukesha County Fair. Everyone has access to the online version (http://www.waukeshacountyfair.com/entry-info); the specific information for entering 4-H projects is found under the Junior Class section on this webpage.
- Fair Entry – a 4-H project that you show at the Waukesha County Fair.
- Fair Tag – 4-H members receive a fair tag for each Fair Entry they registered on the Waukesha County Fair’s website. This tag lists such information as the exhibitor’s name, age, city, and 4-H club as well as the department, class, and entry number of the exhibit. The appropriate fair tag must be attached to each exhibit (check the Fair Book for the specific location/method of attaching the fair tag for each exhibit) entered at Fair.
- Claim Check – Each fair tag has a claim check on the bottom of the tag. Remove the claim check and keep it. You will need to bring all your claim checks to the project release, the Sunday evening (7:15-9 pm) of Fair in the Arena Building, in order to pick up your exhibits.
- Face-to-face Judging – 4-H members sit down one-on-one with a judge and explain their exhibits and answer questions. This is held in the 4-H Forum on the Waukesha County Fairgrounds the Monday & Tuesday afternoon before Fair.
- Premium – The monetary award each exhibit receives. This is based on the ranking (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) the judge awards. The amount of premiums can be found in the Fair Book; the amounts vary across categories. Exhibits must be picked up during the project release the Sunday evening (7-9 pm) of Fair to be eligible to receive the premium.
- Fair Check – After Fair, each exhibitor will receive one fair check for the total amount of premiums which that exhibitor won at the Fair.
