Tennessee State Fair Livestock Show: Parents Volunteer Their Way Ringside
In the Volunteer State, Show Parents Discover the Fastest Way Past the Ring Gate Is a Free Lanyard
LEBANON, Tennessee — The Tennessee State Fair Livestock Show ran short of nothing this August except jobs, after 43 show parents signed up as fair volunteers in a single weekend and began competing, with the full force of their personalities, for the handful of positions that come with a vest, a lanyard and an unobstructed view of the judge.
The Wilson County Fair – Tennessee State Fair already runs on more than 2,500 volunteers, and the parents insist they were only answering the call. The fair’s 2026 theme was “Tennessee Voices and Volunteers Celebrating America 250!” according to WSMV’s announcement of the 2026 dates and theme. Show parents read the second half of that sentence, underlined it, and asked where the ring steward sign-up sheet was kept.
How a Vest Became the Most Valuable Item at the James E. Ward Agricultural Center
Since 2021, when the Tennessee State Fair moved in with the Wilson County Fair, parents at its more than 150 livestock shows have watched from the bleachers like every other member of the public, a seating plan they describe as “historically unjust” and exhibitors call “perfect.” Then, last spring, a swine father noticed that the man who opens the ring gate wears a yellow vest and stands four feet from the judge.
“Four feet,” the father told Farm.FM, holding up four fingers. “I’ve sat in row nine for six years. Row nine is not four feet.”
He applied to volunteer the next morning. By Friday, 42 more parents had applied for the ring steward position, which has two openings, both held by the same two retired cattlemen since roughly 1979.
Excerpts From the Volunteer Coordinator’s Assignment Sheet
The fair’s livestock volunteer coordinator, a retired extension worker with 31 years of fair duty, keeps her assignments on a clipboard. She let Farm.FM copy several entries “as a warning to other states.”
Gate latch, show ring. “Requested by 19 swine parents. The latch has worked fine since about 1994. One applicant brought his own.”
Judge’s water bottle. “Requested by 26. There is one bottle. The judge brings it from home. A mother offered to carry it ‘for continuity.’”
Shavings rake, between classes. “Requested by 14, every one of whom asked to rake during the exact five minutes their child is in the make-up ring. One raked a pattern into the shavings that, viewed from the bleachers, spelled BACK STRAIGHT.”
Hay crew. “Zero requests.” Tennessee harvests 1.7 million acres of hay, 11th in the nation, according to Tennessee Farm Bureau. Not one parent wanted to touch it.
When the real jobs ran out, the parents began inventing new ones. She received applications for Assistant Gate Latch Liaison, Ringside Hydration Specialist, Sawdust Continuity Coordinator and, from a heifer mother, Director of Judge Morale. Each arrived with a homemade vest in a color the coordinator had never issued. Three arrived laminated.
The Lanyard Arms Race at the Tennessee State Fair Livestock Show
By opening day, volunteering was an industry. Receipts from a single barn aisle included a $612 custom embroidered volunteer vest with the family’s ranch logo on the back; a $1,840 “volunteer-grade” golf cart rental with an LED light bar and a horn that played the first four notes of “Rocky Top”; a $349 online certificate in “Event Hospitality and Crowd Flow”; and $150-an-hour sessions with a theater coach to practice a “neutral volunteer face” for when a child’s barrow walks past the judge with its head down.
The aisle’s total: $9,214. The ribbons in that class cost about $4 each.
The volunteer hour logs were the next battleground. One father logged 212 volunteer hours over the fair’s ten days, which the fair bills as “the BEST 10 Days of the Year” and which contain 240 hours. His log included “four hours, Tuesday, standing near the steer ring in a supportive manner” and “two hours, emotional availability.”
A goat mother logged 213.
What the Exhibitors Saw From Inside the Ring
The young people showing the animals were, as always, the most reasonable people on the grounds. A 15-year-old FFA member from a Middle Tennessee chapter said her father had volunteered to hold the gate for her market hog class.
“It’s a pull gate,” she said. “He pushed it. I went around.”
A 12-year-old 4-H member said her mother’s “Ringside Hydration Specialist” role mostly involved handing her water every 40 seconds while she was setting her lamb’s feet. “I drank eleven bottles,” she said. “My lamb placed third. I placed first in hydration.”
On the second Saturday, 23 exhibitors signed a one-paragraph letter to the coordinator, written in pencil on the back of a feed tag. It thanked the parents and asked, respectfully, whether there were any volunteer jobs “in a different part of the fairgrounds. Any part. We are flexible.”
Fiddlers Grove Welcomes 43 New Residents
There was. The fairgrounds include Fiddlers Grove, a historic village of old Tennessee buildings, and its interpreters were short-staffed. On Sunday morning she reassigned all 43 parent volunteers to it, in period costume, portraying “Tennessee farm families, circa 1900, who sent the children to the fair with the hog and stayed home to put up hay.”
The costumes did not have pockets for phones, which the coordinator described as “historically accurate.” Fiddlers Grove is a comfortable distance from the show ring and an uncomfortable distance from the cell tower.
They were a sensation. The swine father who started it all spent the afternoon demonstrating a hay scythe to tourists, explaining to a family from Ohio that “back then, a parent knew his place, and it was the hayfield.” A heifer mother churned butter for six hours, calling it her most relaxing livestock show since 2014. The swine show, minus its 19 gate-latch applicants, ran 14 minutes early.
The coordinator says the 2027 Tennessee State Fair Livestock Show is already fully staffed at the ring, where the two retired cattlemen have re-upped for another year. Fiddlers Grove, however, has openings. Eleven parents have reapplied, the swine father has asked to be the blacksmith, and the heifer mother wants the butter churn reserved.
Five Humorous Observations About Tennessee 4-H and FFA Livestock Shows
- Forty-three parents applied to open one gate, and nobody applied for hay crew. In a state with 1.7 million acres of hay, that is not volunteering. That is a seating request wearing a vest.
- A father logged 212 volunteer hours in a 240-hour fair. The other 28 were presumably spent telling the judge he was “just here to help.”
- Spending $9,214 on vests, golf carts and a neutral-face coach to stand four feet closer to a $4 ribbon is ambitious. Playing “Rocky Top” on the golf-cart horn while doing it is Tennessee.
- The kids’ appeal fit on the back of a feed tag. The parents’ applications were laminated. You can tell which side had livestock to feed.
- The best volunteers at the fair turned out to be the ones placed in 1900. The secret to a well-run livestock show was a butter churn and no cell signal.
Farm Satire Disclaimer
This is farm satire from Farm.FM, and every vest, receipt and quote above has been exaggerated for laughs. The Tennessee State Fair, its livestock shows, its real volunteers and the young people who raise and show those animals are the genuine article and worth a trip to Lebanon. Satire is a rural survival skill: between drought, cattle markets, hay that gets rained on and forms filed in triplicate, a farm community that can laugh at itself at the co-op counter is a community that keeps going.