In the 40 years since the Washington County Fair began, our ever-industrializing society has led us away from the land. We have substituted SUVs for tractors, sweatshops for spinning wheels, and processed slices of meat for large turkey legs straight off the bone. We have become out of touch with the earth’s cycles — its animals, its food, its excrement. For city dwellers who aren’t satisfied by weekly trips to the farmer’s market, the Washington County Fair is our annual destination to re-connect. Like the massive state fairs of the Midwest, the Richmond event is an “oddly American juxtaposition of the totally weird and the comfortably familiar,” as fair photographer Arthur Grace once put it. But unlike Minnesota’s fair, our fair princess’s likeness does not get carved in butter; unlike Wisconsin, we are without a pig race or cream puff curling. We do, however, have the dung throw.Run by the Pomona Grange, the fair exists to promote and showcase the role of agriculture in our lives, and remains a completely volunteer-run endeavor. Marjorie Tucker, 79, is the historian of the Rhode Island Grange, and was around for the fair’s modest beginning. There were all sorts of odd competitions then, says Tucker, but while others got weeded out, the dung throw just stuck (the greased pole climb didn’t fly with insurers, and the calf tie angered the animal rights people). But neither Tucker nor anyone else I asked weighed in on why exactly the dung throw began in the first place.
The competition is certainly a throw, or maybe a hurl, but definitely no mild-mannered toss. Technique matters, and depends on the size and weight of the dried piece of cow dung the contestant chooses. They come in two varieties: small and compact like geodes, better for overhand throwing, and large and flat and round — a sort of dried placenta infused with straw — that suggest the Frisbee technique.
The dung throw is run by several dairymen named George. George Whaley Jr., a 20-year-old dairy farmer in South Kingstown, collects the cow pies from his field to dry. Whaley assists former dairy farmer George Earl Whitford, 40, in running the competition, which Whitford’s father George ran before him.
On the fair’s sunny Saturday afternoon, the Junior throwers (ages 7-17) lined up and stepped to the line drawn in mud, where Whitford handed each a dung from cardboard boxes in the back of his silver pickup truck. Some kids threw it like a baseball, some threw it up high, some seemed to aim directly and fiercely at the muddy ground. The thrower then stood where his or her dung landed. The three farthest remained on the field to the end, ducking when necessary.
The dung throw inspires the enthusiastic participation of audience members, who take the chance to shout “Holy shit!” or “You threw like crap!” while critiquing a given contestant’s technique or dung choice. In the adult divisions, the dung was wetter and heavier, often breaking into small pieces while still high in the air.
