SKOWHEGAN – Visitors to the 189th annual Skowhegan State Fair are immediately struck with familiar smells and sounds: fried dough, sizzling sausages and onion rings, accompanied by noisy diesel generators, disco and rock music blaring from the rides and the constant laughter and shouting of children.

But head to the back of the fair, past the frontier saloon, past the rides named Freakout, Zipper, Earthquake and the Haunted Cavern, and past the french fry stands and toy vendors, past the games – “Take a try, go ahead, come on, take a try…” – and the music fades, the atmosphere shifts.

Here is the Skowhegan State Fair’s other face, its foundation – the agricultural section.

“My kids love the midway but this is the part of the fair they talk about for weeks afterwards,” said Charlene Slade of Emden. “Look! A cow,” her 4-year-old son, Edan shouted, pointing at a steer and pulling on his mother’s hand.

“Even though we live in a rural area,” Slade said, “we still are pretty far removed from farming. Every year, here at the fair, we can touch those rural roots again.”

Even the fair participants were praising the agricultural section.

“I haven’t been here in 25 years,” North Berwick dairy farmer Mark Duckworth said Thursday. “They have made such a lot of improvements. They should really be proud of themselves. They’ve done a nice job here.”

Duckworth was watching his son, Cody, prepare a matched set of working steers for competition. “This is the last two out of three qualifiers for the Eastern States Exposition,” he said. The Big E, as it is known, is the world championships for 4-H steer teams, and Cody Duckworth is headed back for a second year.

The boy was one of 13 teenagers in a 4-H team from Cumberland and Franklin counties that came to the fairgrounds Wednesday night from the Topsham Fair. They got up at 5 a.m. to wash their steers and begin grooming them for competition.

“This teaches them a lot of responsibility,” Carol Duckworth said about her son. “We don’t take care of his animals. He does, one hour every day, not counting training.”

The Duckworths weren’t alone in their praise of the Skowhegan barns, rings and agricultural buildings.

“This is beautiful over here,” Alissa Shartner of Bangor commented Thursday. “They’ve even planted mums alongside the building. It is so clean and bright.”

Skowhegan Fair President Tom Dillon gives Agriculture Manager Rusty Farrin all the credit. “And he never even farmed,” Dillon said.

“That’s right,” Farrin admitted. “I do antiques and auctions.”

But along with an amazing group of volunteers, Farrin has turned the agriculture end of the fair into a real draw.

“We reached out to the local businesses,” he said. “With improvements on site, more and more 4-H clubs are coming back.”

Farrin said that without 4-H clubs, Maine won’t have any farms in the future.

Agriculture continues to be the foundation of the fair, Dillon said. “We’ve increased our agriculture offerings and area by 30 to 50 percent,” he said this week.

In 2006, the fair was named Most Improved Large Fair by the Maine Association of Agricultural Fairs.

“We had 300 head of cattle last year and we’ll have 400 this year,” he said. “We were shocked, what with the price of fuel and the economy. We just keep growing every year.”

For next Saturday’s draft horse show, more entries have signed up than ever, he said.

Farrin is proud of the farm facility. “We built two new horse barns this year,” he said.

This augments the recently completed Donald Eames exhibition hall, which houses the flower show competitions and features a wrap-around porch full of rocking chairs.

Next door is the barnyard, where children can get an up-close look – and feel – of a calf, llama, rabbit, chicken, duck or donkey.

A few steps away is the Lyndall T. Smith Agriculture building. Rows of canned peas, carrots, mustard pickles and other jars vie for blue ribbons alongside the best produce that Somerset County gardens can grow. There is even a scarecrow collection standing “guard” over the Maine State Grange exhibits.

“I can’t believe anybody even does this anymore,” Rita Joames of Winslow said. “I can remember my grandmother steaming up the kitchen all August while canning the vegetables. This brings back such memories.”

Volunteers are really the secret to the agriculture areas success, Farrin said. One volunteer, Phil Haulk, takes his vacation every year from Sappi Paper to help at the fair. Another, Steve Frederick, shuts his plumbing and heating business down to work for two weeks at the fair – for free. “Some of these folks are living out here in campers,” Farrin said.

Farrin sat on a fence outside the livestock office. Loudspeakers overhead were calling for the next competitors in the horse ring, and Farrin looked around the barns.

“It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Sometimes it is just the little things – a little mulch, some flowers, putting the flag up.”

The Skowhegan State Fair is on Route 201 north of Skowhegan’s downtown. It will open at 7 a.m. daily through Aug. 18. Admission on Aug. 12-16 is $6 and $8 on Aug. 10, 11, 17 and 18. Seniors 62 years and over get in for half price on Monday, Aug. 13. More information about the fair can be found at www.skowheganstatefair.com or by calling the office at 474-2947.