There’s a guy I sometimes see on my morning jogs commuting to work on what looks like a kid’s scooter outfitted with an electric motor. The high price of gas has, in fact, driven folks here in L.A. to increasingly bizarre forms of transportation: barely functional 1980s Mercedes Benzes running on deep fryer fat, scooters, golf cart like electric cars etc. I’m waiting for folks to adopt the glorious, 19th century bicycle, and while many have, I’m not holding my breath until gas prices get much higher. One thing’s for sure, we’ll know the “pain at the pump” has gotten really bad when we start to see the return of draft horses to Los Angeles. To preview that possibility and experience the fading agricultural glory of Los Angeles County we headed to the Los Angeles County Fair this past week. Here’s a pictorial tour:

It was a real pleasure to view the elegant moves of the draft horses and their handlers. The competition we watched involved maneuvering a carriage around obstacles, backing up into a tight space, stopping at a mail box and weaving around some cones. Good training for pulling that carriage into L.A.’s many mini-malls. All that was missing from the competition was text messaging while driving.

The big highlight of the fair for us was visiting the beekeeping booth, viewing a display hive and talking with a knowledgeable beekeeper (didn’t get a decent picture). Best of all we made contact with our local beekeeping club, and we’ll have information next month for those of you in the L.A. area who are interested in keeping bees.

From beekeeping we jumped on over to the home economics competitions and marveled at the preserved foods display. With the recent success of Pickle Fest 2008, we predict a new batch of competitors in next year’s competition.

Mrs. Homegrown Evolution got obsessed with determining the judging criteria of the bizarre “tablescaping” competition. Mr. Homegrown Evolution marveled at a tablescaping entry that managed to incorporate LA subway maps.

Sadly, there was a lot of lame stuff at the fair as well. Los Angeles was once the wealthiest agricultural county in the United States. Now, as one local agricultural official put it to me, “we grow houses” and our county fair that reflects that fact. Out went the 4-H clubs and in comes the corporate sponsors.

Taking the place of what used to be livestock competitions was a farm animal exhibition called “Fair View Farms” sponsored by McDonald’s. Do I need to comment on the irony of that bit of branding? Fair View Farms featured bleak panoramas, such as this large pen of pigs with, oddly, a bunch of ordinary roosters pecking around.

What happened to all the different animal breeds I remember from the San Diego Fair?

McDonald’s also sponsored a revisionist nutrition re-education compound, the educational content of which would make papa Stalin proud. When I dropped by, a bunch of bored school kids, sitting amongst straw bales, were being taught how to make a fruit smoothie by Monica Montes, R.D., who was sporting one of those wearable microphones just like the drive-through cashiers at McDonald’s use. I fled, fearing that I might ask something snarky during the question and answer session. I guess every R.D. has their price. Who knows, with the high cost of Mr. Homegrown Evolution’s recent root canal, you may soon see our backyard chicken flock hit the road sponsored by, say, Carls Jr.

And speaking of Stalinist re-education, the dairy council entertained us with a heavily pixelated web video transferred to DVD all about the wonders of industrial milk production. They carefully glossed over the way cows are kept in massive pens with no access to pasture and, instead, wisely decided to focus, in great detail, on how they manufacture plastic milk bottles. They even showed us how the bottles are shrink wrapped and placed on pallets. And what says “fun day at the fair” more than watching “palletizing” on a TV placed in a vintage 1980s entertainment cabinet while sitting in 100º heat?

To end on a less cranky note, we’ll leave you with these lovely vintage diagrams done in a classic early 20th century sign making style, one below and one at the top of this post. It’s really hard to say when they were made.