For the last few years, readers have been deluged with stories, in this newspaper and other media outlets, about children eating nutritious lunches in school, how they’re learning to grow vegetables in newly built school gardens and how they’re becoming more self-sufficient and healthier for the effort. Healthy food options, it seems, are a revelation discovered just recently by the latest generation of school reformers.

Heart-healthy meals are great, and, let’s face it, were a foreign concept only a few years ago when pizza, chicken nuggets and the vegetable known as ketchup were served almost daily. But, school lunch and community garden stories have become so common, that they’re becoming overdone, no pun intended.

Yes, kids are learning great things and the locally grown food makes everyone feel good about their efforts. The school and community gardens are useful on a localized basis, feeding individuals or families or a group of children a special lunch of handpicked veggies. The task of feeding the general populace, however, is accomplished by larger-scale farmers. And once a year, during fall fair season, Maine celebrates these magicians of the field and barnyard, who turn little piglets into mountains of meat and empty fields into carpets of produce.

And children still are playing a part. Kids in 4-H are active participants in raising food that can sustain an entire community. That next generation of farmers is on display Sept. 22-28 at the Cumberland Fair, as well as the Fryeburg Fair the week after.

According to Jenn Grant, a Gorham farmer who oversees two local 4-H chapters, there is a wave of kids involved with farming, some of them third or fourth generation, who are keeping that most important way of life going. Thirty children take part in Grant’s groups and, impressively, that is in a moderately populated southern section of the state known more for its battle with urban sprawl.

The numbers are looking good elsewhere, too. Contrary to reports that farming is dying, 4-H involvement is vibrant, with many subgroups that focus on various aspects of farming. (Check the website of UMaine Cooperative Extension, which oversees 4-H, to see how complete and diverse the list is.) The widespread involvement is important for all of us because, to be sure, it’s hard to eat local without local farmers.

But the fair isn’t just for kids; it’s for adults who long for the simpler, more agrarian times when muscle came in handy and livelihoods were made or broken by the weather. Fair organizer Mike Timmons, president of the Cumberland Farmers Club, expects 50,000 visitors during the weeklong spectacle at the corner of Blanchard and Bruce Hill roads. Arenas will again be packed with those cheering on monster oxen and draft horses that respond explosively when called to pour on the power.

The more genteel skills of farm life will be celebrated, too. Pursuits such as preservation canning, quilt-making and, of course, the delectable contests for best pies, cakes and breads, will likely serve to inspire fairgoers to concoct their own homemade version, rather than buying Mrs. Smith’s not-as-tasty impersonation.

Farm life is still a living, breathing part of Maine, and the Cumberland Fair celebrates that way of life. And people flock to it. Fryeburg Fair is literally chock full each year. Many probably wonder when the day will come when urban sprawl totally takes over this area of Maine and chokes any interest in fall agricultural fairs. That day may come but, for now, the numbers of young people who crowd into the fairgrounds annually prove that farming is not a thing of history, but an active, real, life-sustaining part of our present. The locavore and eat-local movements may ensure that way of life increases in popularity. And with help from this new crop of 4-Hers, it’ll stay that way a long time.

–John Balentine, managing editor