On a recent Saturday in Portola Valley, in a shady and grassy corner of the Town Center, children were having a particularly good time. Particular in that they were celebrating the equestrian aspects of living in a town with a history of equestrian aspects.
What does the skeleton of a horse look like? Easy to answer at the 2018 Horse Fair, held this year on May 12. Almost as good as an X-ray, in a fenced-in area stood a white horse on whose left side the principal bones had been outlined in black and filled in with white paint, water-based of course.
Is horse manure a good thing or a bad thing? It’s definitely an amusing thing and a curiosity to kids of a certain age. A table set up to display it included samples of manure and various foods, including several that were fun to consider but that horses probably don’t eat, like Cheerios. And posters explaining it all.
What does it feel like to run through an obstacle course for a horse — to be like a horse for a few minutes? Opportunity knocked at the fair and the kids took it, whether leaping over a set of crossed poles or a raised 2-by-4. You could test your balance on a barrel meant to simulate standing on a real horse.
There were other activities not so demanding of physicality. Kids could listen to the heartbeat of a horse, could paint a horseshoe, could take a ride (as could the young-at-heart adults with a penchant for wagon rides).
The ponies could not have been more gracious to their young passengers, but the chickens and ducks, and definitely the rabbits, had probably had enough after the first few minutes inside a petting zoo with free-roaming children. The baby goats and baby pigs seemed to love it, though.
The town’s Trails & Paths Committee sponsored the fair.
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