MISQUAH — The Pine County Fair board met at the grounds office last Tuesday to take the 2026 fair apart, and came out of it with next year’s dates, a capital-list entry, and a request for quotations.

The 2027 fair will run Wednesday, August 18, through Sunday, August 22. Nobody proposed changing the Wednesday-through-Sunday pattern and nobody was expected to; the board has run that pattern since 1974 and the vote took under a minute.

The ice machine, which failed Thursday of fair week at noon and was worked around by borrowing from the Legion, the school and the Northern Tap’s walk-in, did not get bought. It goes on the winter capital list instead, and Chair Verna Tho was directed to obtain both replacement and repair quotations before the board’s winter meeting.

“We can buy a machine in September at September prices with a board that is tired,” Tho said, “or we can get three quotes and buy one in February. The ice is not going to fail again before February. There is no fair in February.” Replacement is the favored outcome and repair remains technically open until the numbers are in, a distinction one member asked to have stated in the minutes and which is stated in the minutes.

The board formally recorded paid attendance at 11,400, the best since 2016, and the premium auction at $41,600. Open-class entries stood at 412 and 4-H enrollment at 58, both records, both already reported in this newspaper and both now in the permanent record.

The shade structure behind the exhibit halls stays. The grandstand roof was discussed for eleven minutes and referred to the same winter meeting, on the grounds that a roof and a machine can be argued about at the same time in the same room by the same tired people.

And the Forest Club’s August letter, requesting a larger space next year for its live-animal building “for reasons,” was received, discussed, and granted in principle without anybody saying the word porcupine out loud. The board asked the club to bring a sketch. The motion passed unanimously. Tho declined to characterize the discussion beyond calling it “short.”

Attendance and the auction were recorded without comment, but the number the board spent the most time on was neither: the fair took in $2,180 in gate receipts on Sunday, the rained-out derby day, against $1,340 on the same day a year ago. Two members argued this proves a derby in the rain outdraws a derby in the sun and should not be treated as a fluke. One member said it proves nothing and that a person cannot plan for weather. The matter was not resolved and did not need to be.

The board also set its own meeting calendar: the winter meeting is the second Tuesday of February, which is when the ice machine, the grandstand roof and the Forest Club sketch all come due at once. Tho, asked whether that is too much for one February evening, said it is exactly right, because “in February nobody has anywhere else to be and everybody is honest about money.”