Rice County Fair to feature new shows, more vendors and music

Even after color-coding the fair manager’s massive keyring, he still has trouble finding the right one.

Peter van Sluis, the new manager of the Rice County Fair, stressed that hardworking volunteers and funding from several grants make the fair possible. From 1 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday at 7 p.m., the 2024 Rice County Fair returns with upgraded buildings, a lot more venders and even a new show in the grandstand.

Opening night of the fair includes a DJ set in the beer garden, live music on the other stages and the return of the International Motor Contest Association Old Timers races.

“We’ve never had anything on Wednesday afternoon on the stage,” van Sluis said. “I said ‘Why not?’ They said ‘Well, it’s a quiet day.’ I said ‘Well, maybe it’s quite because there was no shows.’”

Throughout the duration of the fair, Rice County Steam and Gas Engine Show will be doing demonstrations, and there will be woodworking and pottery demonstrations. The engines are contingent on crop output and dust.

There will be more food vendors, more general vendors and more outdoor vendors than recent years.

“Here, in the archery building last year, we only have these race cars in there,” van Sluis said. “Right now, we have so many vendors, this (commercial building) is full and this (archery building) is half-full with vendors. So we have way more vendors than last year.”

A relatively small thing that’s new this year will be the schedules. Rather than the old design, there’ll be 10,000 booklets with a page per day of the fair and a map of the fairgrounds. The printing cost is covered by a grant.

There are new areas to eat, reorganized trailers and even a new dump station for any animal trailers needing to offload or hose down.

The University of Minnesota provided a grant to do some upgrades to the animal barns as well. The biggest of which is thanks to Erik McKay and Cliff Kreft, who estimate they put in more than 100 hours of volunteer work transforming the swine barn.

The swine barn has new walls and new pigpens made of bright red fencing. The poultry barn has new paint and even a new material under the cages that’s easier on the poultry’s feet.

The sheep barn is getting new lights put in, which van Sluis said were delivered Friday. It also has a wall to protect the side pens from rainwater, which rendered them unusable in years prior.

“Of course you know we have Goldstar Amusements bringing the rides,” van Sluis said. “Typically, you know, you have the Ring of Fire, you have the Ferris wheel and the bumper cars. But he sometimes brings in new stuff as well. I do not know what he’s going to bring yet.”