MISQUAH — The fairgrounds open Wednesday, August 19. Between now and then the exhibit halls get their tables, the 4-H barn gets its bedding, and Verna Tho gets, by her own estimate, four hours of sleep a night. Here is what the town is walking into.

The schedule. Exhibit-hall judging begins Wednesday morning and continues through the afternoon; halls open to the public at 4 p.m. Wednesday. The midway opens Thursday at noon and runs through Sunday evening. The 4-H livestock shows run Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings, with the record fifty-eight members showing across the barns. The giant-pumpkin weigh-in is Saturday, August 22, at 10 a.m., on the recertified scale. The fair closes Sunday at 6 p.m. with the exhibit-hall pickup that Verna Tho has asked this newspaper to describe as “not optional.”

What’s new. The board has added a shaded seating area behind the exhibit halls — twelve borrowed picnic tables under a canvas fly, assembled from the pavilion’s inventory. “Nobody will notice it until Saturday afternoon,” Tho said, “and then everybody who has been on their feet for four hours will notice it very much.” Also new: the open-class photography display has been moved to the north wall, where the light is better, a change requested by exhibitors and granted after what the board minutes describe as “discussion.”

Where the pickles stand. Thirty-one entries across the brine classes, the deepest field at the fair, judged Wednesday morning. The horticulture superintendent, who has judged pickles here for nineteen years, offers her annual advice to entrants, unchanged and unheeded: “Label the lid, not the jar. The jar gets washed.”

And the matter everyone is actually counting the days for: the weigh-in, Saturday at ten, with both known contenders confirmed and neither speaking to the other in print for two weeks running, which for this correspondence constitutes silence. Last year’s margin was nine pounds. The scale has been certified by the county. Nothing further will be printed here.