A Few Minutes Spent At Prairie Fest With Mary Kelleher & The Chicks

I spent an almost record breaking amount of time at the Prairie Fest today, along with a lot of other people.

I would hazard to guess that today's Prairie Fest broke the record for number of people on the Tandy Hills prairie.

The 10th Anniversary Prairie Fest appeared, by far, to have the most booths, displays and activities I've seen at a Prairie Fest.

However, the belly dancing was a bit subdued this year, at least whilst I was watching. But there was some good hula hooping going on in the hippie van belly dancing tepee area.

Music is a big part of the Prairie Fest, powered by solar generated electricity. As you can see, below, the Prairie Fest is a bit of a Woodstock on the Prairie.

Now that you're making me think about it, I think Woodstock on the Prairie should be the theme of next year's Prairie Fest.

As I walked around the Prairie Fest, taking in all the festivities swirling about me, I came upon one area that was in a frenzy of excitement. What, I wondered, are all these people looking at and doing which seemed to be causing them to have such a mighty fine time?

Turned out to be a wagon full of one week old chicks.

Earlier in the week I had been told that Mary, who has a farm, would be at the Prairie Fest with chicks. At that point in time I was not sure what this meant.

Turns out Mary with the farm is Mary Kelleher, the lone Representative of the People on the TRWD board.

Mary wheeled a wagon full of chicks to the Prairie Fest where she and others, including Layla Caraway, were doing some intense campaigning for Craig Bickley and Michele Von Luckner to join Mary on the TRWD board, replacing Jim Lane and Marty Leonard, who were nowhere to be seen at the Prairie Fest.

I sat with the chicks for awhile. It was interesting, and a bit surprising to me, how many people were tuned into the TRWD board election and totally receptive to the plea to vote out the incumbents. Some of the people sounded more like campaigners than the campaigners.

The young voter above told me he'd named his chick, Peeps. I thought that was cute, but we were all concerned he was holding Peeps way too tightly.

At one point I decided to take a picture of the chick's signage. That caused a bad dog reaction which almost got me bit.

I was asked twice if Craig Bickley and Michele Von Luckner were in attendance. I said that they were not in attendance, but Mary Kelleher was in the room.

With her chicks.

Mary Kelleher in the room seemed to be a satisfactory substitute for the missing candidates.

I did point out that fellow TRWD board candidate, Keith Annis, had a booth, but no one seemed to know who he was. I saw the Keith Annis booth, with Keith Annis manning it all alone. It was sort of pitiful. He could have used some chicks....