2008 Things to Do & See To Come
September 5-14, 2008
Bairds Petting ZooVolunteer Village
Tiny Acres Farm
Bairds Petting Zoo
The Animal Petting Zoo offers exciting and educational fun people of all ages! Interact with animals from all over the world such as 150 year pld. 600 pound Alabra tortoise, Zedonk, baby Camel, Emu, Llama, Nigai antelope, fallow deer, Zebu, Aoudad, baby Buffalo, baby Scotch Highlander, Giraffe, Kangaroo, Zebra, Cheviot, and African Pygmy and Nubian Goats.
Volunteer Village
We're turning sorghum cane into sweet, savory, scrumptious syrup! Visit our sorghum mill and see the way that Mennonite farmers have harvested sorghum for hundreds of years! Here's a peek into the process! The heated cane juice is run through several cooking pans to cook out the impurities. The cooking pans can be heated with with direct fire (for a two 
hour process), or with steam (making the process 15 or 20 minutes) that gives a more even temperature that doesn't scorch the finished product. The juice is cleansed of impurities and concentrated by evaporation in the open pans into a clear, amber-colored, mild-flavored syrup. The syrup keeps all of its natural sugars and other nutrients and contains no chemical additives or preservatives. This sorghum is not the "molasses" you find in the store from other states. Molasses is a byproduct of the sugar industry. In other words, molasses is made from what is left over after sugar is made. Sorghum is the syrup produced when the extracted juice from the sorghum cane is boiled down.
Don't Miss the Tiny Acres Little Farmer Interactive Exhibit
Located inside and just outside of the Agriculture Building, Tiny Acres is an agricultural education exhibit for kids introduced at the 2005 Tennessee State Fair. Children (ages 3-8) become farm hands at this free, hands-on exhibit as they are provided the opportunity to experience the agricultural process, beginning at the farm and ending at the market.
Each station provides hands-on tasks related to planting crops and the tending of animals. For example, at the chicken coop, the farm hands feed the chickens the grain they harvested and then collect the eggs. At the dairy barn children milk a cow and collect milk cartons and at the tractor shed they drive peddle tractors with wagons to haul the hay for the animals.
After the children have gone through each of the miniature barns and collected their products, they sell them at the farmers market for cash to be used at the retail grocery store where they have the opportunity to buy their finished product e.g. apples, milk, cereal, soy nuts, cans of fruit & vegetables, etc.
Tiny Acres is free with paid admission to the fair and located next to the Agriculture Building.