FRYEBURG – Kids licked their sticky fingers after eating cotton candy. An occasional scream echoed across the midway from the rides. Harness racers clung on as their horses made their way around the race track.

Wednesday was day four of the Fryeburg Fair, the biggest fair in the state. Local exhibitors found a way to either profit or simply show off their skills to the hundreds of people walking by.

Don’t be a dunce

Third-graders at Charles A. Snow School in Fryeburg had a different learning experience Wednesday morning.

They held class inside a Little Red Schoolhouse at the Fryeburg Fairgrounds. They wrote with a quill and ink, and learned the history of the classroom they were sitting in. It was a former one-room schoolhouse.

The schoolhouse was open for the rest of the day for the public to visit. Pupils sat at old-fashioned desks and drew on chalkboards. An American flag, a picture of George Washington and a scroll with the Declaration of Independence hung on the walls.

People – old and young – got a kick out of sitting in the corner and trying on the dunce cap, a form of punishment at the time the schoolhouse was operating.

Dreams, fairy tales

Julie Yarbrough of Hiram poked at a loose ball of felt with a felting needle. Soon it would be woven into something unique.

Inside the Fiber Center she was surrounded by items she had created out of wool and felt – cats, Mardi Gras masks, sheep, cows and a mermaid.

“She was eating a little too much chicken of the sea,” she said of the mermaid, who seemingly packed on a few extra pounds.

She said her creations are meant to be silly and out-of-the-ordinary. She said she aims to have kids laugh when they pass her booth.

Pure sugar

The recipe is simple. Take maple sugar, white cane sugar, mix it together and throw it in a spinner. The result?

Cotton candy.

Rodney Hall of Hall Farm in East Dixfield, along with his employees, comes to the fair every year to sell homemade maple syrup and cotton candy, made on site.

Kids and adults alike left the Sugarhouse, where Hall was exhibiting, licking their sticky fingers from the sugary treat.

He said the maple sugar is needed in the cotton candy mix so the white sugar doesn’t liquefy.

Also inside the Sugarhouse, steam vented from a maple syrup evaporator, and bottles of maple syrup were on sale.

Hungry goats

About 40 goats, sheep, chickens, ducks and geese, both the young and their mothers, fought each other to earn the attention and the snacks that children were handing out inside Old McDonald’s Petting Zoo.

Bella Robinson, 3, of East Andover, even crawled under one of the tables in attempt to give one of the baby goats a kiss.

Peg Verney, a fair worker, mans the zoo every year. She said the animals are very tame and have never had a problem with the kids.

About 10 kids and their guardians were let in at a time. A long line extended from the barn with eager kids waiting to come in.

When a child would come in, Verney would hand him or her a small cup of animal feed.

She emphasized that the gate had to stay closed.

“I want you to come all the way in before you start to feed the animals so I don’t lose any goats,” she said.

Flowers aplenty

The Maine State Florists and Growers Association brought in colorful bouquets of flowers to display and sell at the fair.

A staple at the Fryeburg Fair for 23 years, they host four flower shows and auctions each day of the fair, except for Sunday, when they present three times.

Florists come from all over the state with the intention of educating the public through their shows, said Bill Sheehan, an association member who coordinated the fair’s floral events.

Their collections are vast.

“Flowers are shipped to our doors from every country in the world,” Sheehan said.