Country Capitalism

I find myself here in what some might call a “wide-spot-in-the-road, Ohio”—a place more known for its connection to a man whose name has graced homestyle restaurants across the country: Bob Evans. Yes, that Bob Evans. I’ve come to attend the Bob Evans Farm Festival, a three-day event held on the original homestead where this Ohio farm boy turned his sausage-making prowess into a national chain of restaurants that evokes comfort and Americana. But as I stand here, looking out over the festival tents and various corrals, I can’t shake the feeling that something’s missing.

This isn’t quite the event I imagined it would be. I expected a true country fair atmosphere—something akin to those gatherings where neighbors come together, not just to celebrate, but to show off the fruits of their labor. I had thought I’d see 4-H kids showing off their prized pigs and cows, local families swapping stories of harvests and hardships, and the Shriner’s club standing proud beside their charitable works. But instead, what I’ve found feels more like a marketplace, not of ideas, but of goods—vendors hawking their crafts and food stands dishing out funnel cakes and sausage sandwiches.

What I’ve found feels more like a marketplace, not of ideas,
but of goods—vendors hawking their crafts and food stands
dishing out funnel cakes and sausage sandwiches.

Sure, there’s the obligatory egg toss contest, and over there, kids are cheering at a pig race. There’s a certain charm in watching the little pink animals dash around the track, and I’ll admit, a smile crept across my face at their enthusiasm. But for the most part, this festival feels manufactured—designed not to celebrate the hard work of a farming community, but to turn a profit. The rides in the carnival are third-rate, the kind of mechanical contraptions that make you question their safety as you hear their rusty creaks in the distance. They’re not the kind of rides that spark childhood nostalgia but rather feel like a forced nod to the idea of fun.

In my mind, I contrast this with the true county fairs I’ve been to before. A real country fair is about more than just food and crafts. It’s about tradition. It’s about the boy who’s spent months grooming his show steer, hoping to earn that blue ribbon. It’s about the woman who bakes pies for the competition, not for profit, but because her recipe has been passed down through generations, and she wants to honor her mother’s memory by taking home a prize. It’s about the gathering of a community to witness the culmination of a year’s worth of labor—be it raising an animal, growing the largest pumpkin, or crafting the perfect quilt.

At a true country fair, you can feel the
pulse of a town’s history in every corner.

At a true country fair, you can feel the pulse of a town’s history in every corner. The local high school band might play on a makeshift stage while families sit on the grass, watching with the same pride they feel every Friday night during football season. The 4-H tent is a place where kids and their families come not just to compete but to connect with a way of life that is becoming increasingly rare in a world that’s moving faster every day.

Here at the Bob Evans Farm Festival, I feel more like a spectator than a participant. I walk from vendor to vendor, each one offering something handmade or deep-fried, but it lacks the heart of a community coming together. There’s no sense of shared purpose, no undercurrent of pride in the land or in the work of hands that have been calloused by years of labor. Instead, there’s a commercial sheen over it all, a sense that we’re here to consume, not to connect.

It’s not that the festival is without merit. I see families enjoying themselves, children running from one booth to the next, their faces sticky with sugar from cotton candy. I hear laughter from a group of teenagers trying their luck at the carnival games, and there’s a certain joy in that. But beneath the surface, I can’t help but feel that this place, this event, is more spectacle than substance.

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare. After all, times have changed, and perhaps the festival is simply a reflection of what people want today—a fun, easy day out where they can eat some good food and buy a trinket or two to take home. But I can’t help but long for something deeper, something that speaks to the roots of this land and the people who’ve worked it for generations.

In the end, I suppose it’s like Bob Evans himself—once a farm boy, now a name on a chain of restaurants. The essence is still there, somewhere beneath the layers of commercialization, but you have to look a little harder to find it.