LAGRANGE – Events for the LaGrange mini fair, in LaGrange, kicked off with a free-will donation breakfast in the park on June 24.

The events continued throughout the day at the 51st annual event. What began as a way for area 4-H participants to showcase their projects many years ago, now draws a tremendous crowd to the small Wyoming town. 

Laura Gomes, owner of B&V Coffee Café in LaGrange had previously participated in the festivities, but this year was the businesses first year catering the breakfast. 

“We thought it went great. We, of course, catered the breakfast in the morning in the mini park, across from where our shop is,” Gomes said. “We had a delightful time meeting people. It was great. And the breakfast, we loved it.”

“Last year, we had our trailer,” Gomes explained. “We have a mobile coffee trailer inside one of the old buildings in La Grange, last year we had our trailer out on the street, in front our building.” 

“I think the turn out was pretty good. Our gymkhana was definitely more than it was last year. Our breakfast attendance was down a little from last year. We served about 250 between lunch and super,” Lynette Bye said. Bye is a member of the LaGrange/Hawk Springs Homemakers 4-H Club and other club members, she helped with BINGO, supper, money hunt and a parade entry. 

“Basically, I started when I was four years old. Way back then. I took a few years off for different reasons but now I am back involved again,” Bye said. “It’s good to see it going still.”

The mini fair hosted two new events this year.

“The selfie scavenger hunt was new and so was the bronc riding,” Bye said. “We asked people to take selfies in 10 different spots around town and hash tag them all “minifair2023,” everyone that turned in their entries by four, they put their names in a hat and drew out a winner to get a $50.00 gift card,” Bye explained. 

“For our mini fair, we want to stress, it’s about those kids. That is the major thing. We are in it for them,” Marlo Ward said.

Area children enjoyed participating in the pet parade, the kids’ gymkhana, a foot and bike race and a build your own stick horse contest, while other community members enjoyed partaking in the breakfast catered by the café held in the park. 

Vendor spots were available for an opportunity to market crafts, clothing, baked goods and other homespun creations. 

According to Lisa Johnson of The LaGrange Index, the children’s rodeo is gaining popularity in the community. 

“There was an excellent turnout for the kids’ gymkhana with about 60 competitors,” Johnson said, “[They were] ages three to 14.” 

One of the new events to the mini fair, bronc riding was a collaboration of events from the Ward family, Lee Miller Stock and countless donations and sponsors. 

“When we got to putting the mini fair back together this year, I was talking to my son, who is a bronc rider with the PRCA and he and his wife asked what we thought about having bronc riding after the gymkhana and I presented that to everyone on the fair board and they thought it sounded like a really fun idea,” Ward said. “It was kind of a last-minute thing. Instead of having a full out bronc riding, we decided to have the match bronc riding.” 

Match bronco riding is an invite-only set of matches. 

The match bronc riding gave the four cowboys two rides each. 

“Next year we would like to try to make it a little bit bigger. We are thinking about maybe we would try to get eight cowboys and have a couple of rounds and then do a final four. We’ve got things we need to consider. We didn’t anticipate the gymkhana being nearly as long. We thought it might be over about four, but we had so many entries this year we ran until eight,” Ward said. “I think we will try to do some things to expedite the gymkhana a little bit and if we could get the bronc riding started a little earlier in the evening so we can have a little more of a timeframe to give people. That was our biggest issue.”

The 52nd annual LaGrange Mini Fair and Rodeo is set to take place next year and planning committees are already working on next year’s events. 

“We had a little bit of a problem this last year, there were a lot of people that thought our 50th year was going to be our last year,” Ward explained. “I’m don’t know how that rumor got started.”

In fear of losing the mini fair, Ward used Facebook to request help from the community. 

“That gymkhana, that’s what we are here for,” Ward said. “’I don’t care if I have to put the group together myself, I will do that. We are going to have a gymkhana,’” Ward told the fair board. “The board agreed, we could go ahead with the gymkhana. I just put it on Facebook that the mini fair needed help. People from the community just started stepping up, the Homemakers (4-H club) really stepped up right away. We started getting people from the community saying they would take over wherever we lost the support we needed. We were able to put everything back together and have our celebration again.” 

The Torrington Fiddlers also provided a performance for the community during breakfast, even on short notice.

All of the events, contests, breakfast and games were provided free of charge to the pubic thanks to the generosity of the area sponsors. 

“If anyone would like to start an event at the mini fair, is welcome to join us. Come to the meetings and join us. It takes a lot of people to do this and we need the input and the worker,” Bye said. “They can give me a call any time, if they have any questions.”