By Jessica Domel
Multimedia Editor
Live music, pig races, livestock shows and more await families of all shapes and sizes at this year’s West Texas Fair & Rodeo. The fair is underway and will continue through Saturday, Sept. 16, at the Taylor County Expo Center in Abilene.
This year’s theme is “Pride in our past. Faith in our future.”
“We’ve got a lot of new things here this year. The pig races are here. We’ve got a Wild West comedy gun show. We’ve got a bubble tower. We’ve just got a lot of good entertainers lined up through the night, as well as the PRCA rodeo,” Rochelle Johnson, executive vice president and general manager of the expo center and fair, said.
There’s a little bit of something for everybody to enjoy, Johnson said, from the steer and swine shows this weekend to llamas, miniature Herefords and more.
“We’ve got lots of great exhibits, creative art exhibits, that our local community has entered, whether it be quilting or sewing or hobbies and crafts or canned goods, perishable foods, cakes, pies and that type of thing. There’s lots of really talented people in this part of the world, as we all know,” Johnson said. “Then, of course, we’ve got an educational area with Planet Agriculture that the Texas Farm Bureau brings in for us. All of the entertainment is very family-oriented, and everybody would enjoy coming out here.”
People from across the state travel each year to visit the fair and rodeo. The event is a fundraiser for the non-profit Taylor County Expo Center. It also helps the local economy, Johnson said, and is a venue to help families from all over learn more about agriculture.
“We thank everybody for supporting agriculture. That’s how fairs and rodeos got started—just people in the agriculture business getting together to show off their produce or their animals,” Johnson said. “So we thank everybody for continuing to support agriculture, because we know that’s the mainstay of everybody’s life.”
A full schedule of fair and rodeo events through the weekend can be found at www.taylorcountyexpocenter.com and on the West Texas Fair and Rodeo Facebook page.