Winter Show: Agriculture show opens next week in Valley City
The final preparations are under way for 74th annual edition of the North Dakota Winter Show in Valley City. The events get underway with “warm-up” events on Monday and the official open of the show slated for 9 a.m. Tuesday.By: Keith Norman, The Jamestown Sun
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The final preparations are under way for 74th annual edition of the North Dakota Winter Show in Valley City. The events get underway with “warm-up” events on Monday and the official open of the show slated for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Right now we’re attending to final details and touchups,” said Nancy Allen, Winter Show manager. “The food court people and some of the vendors will start to setup this weekend and everything will be in place by Tuesday.”
Everything points to a good show, according to Don Schlotman, livestock chairman for the Winter Show Board of Directors.
“It’s always hectic to get ready for the opening,” he said. “But we expect a full house of vendors and everything looks good.”
Allen said one of the changes this year is a new rodeo contractor.
“We have Dakota Rodeo Company out of Mandan this year,” she said. “This is a change after many years of Aber Rodeo of Beach. We’ll also highlight Keith Isley specialty acts during the rodeo.”
Isley recently won the “Coors Man in the Can” award as well as the rodeo clown and comedy acts of the year from the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association.
Allen said the other popular regular events include the old-time tractor pull and pickup pull held on Tuesday and the draft horse events on Thursday.
“The draft horses are always popular,” Schlotman said. “A lot of the audience is people who worked with horses when they were younger and enjoy seeing them work again.”
Livestock shows include the Classic Steer show held on Wednesday with the animals later slaughtered and judged also as carcasses.
“The classic steer show remains popular,” Schlotman said. “It’s an education in feeding cattle and raising the best lean meat we can.”
The livestock activities wrap up with youth shows held on Sunday.
“The junior parts of the livestock shows have been steady the last years,” he said. “The open shows at the Winter Show declined because the cattlemen were busy calving so more are taking part in the North Star Classic earlier in the winter.”
The Winter Show also features numerous educational seminars and free stage shows throughout the six day run of the show. A full schedule is available at the website www.northdakotawintershow.com.
Allen says the event draws between 30,000 and 40,000 people each year and has an estimated economic impact of $15 million on the Valley City community.
Parking and admission to the venue are free with separate charges for some specialty events and shows.
“We’ve moved the ticket office up to the barn already,” Allen said. “We’ll be open through the weekend and we still have tickets available for all the shows.”
Sun reporter Keith Norman can be reached at (701) 952-8452 or by e-mail at knorman@jamestownsun.com
Tags: local news, winter show, news
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