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MOUNT VERNON — Eric Taylor has owned horses for about nine years, but he can’t remember when it’s ever been so expensive to have them.

Taylor, 17, is a member of the Trailblazers 4-H club. He drove his horse, Hershey, from Concrete to participate in the Skagit County Fair.

“Gas prices are just insane,” Taylor said. “We do rodeos and the higher gas gets, the less stuff we get to do with our horses.”

Some horse owners are cutting back on the quality of hay to save the pocketbook, he said.

“It’s a lot harder to buy good, quality hay,” he said, especially since most hay is grown in Eastern Washington and beyond.

Many who show large animals at the fair worried about the gas prices and the impact on the 4-H members who raise the animals.

Sisters Rylee and Jacqueline Greenwell of Bow raised Galloway cattle to show at the fair this year. Friday afternoon, they planned to show their three calves, Suzy Q, Archie and Junior. The hardy, ancient Scottish breed has a thick fur coat and long black eyelashes. The Greenwells’ cattle are white, though the breed comes in many colors.

Cattle of any breed consume a lot of food. But the Galloway, Jacqueline Greenwell said, eats less and isn’t nearly as picky as some cattle. Those characteristics save money for ranchers in the long run, she said.

Still, the sisters are cutting corners in many ways, such as parking the trailer nearby instead of driving it back to Bow, or buying medicine online and vaccinating their calves themselves instead of paying for a veterinarian.

Perhaps the most embarrassing, Jacqueline blushed as she talked, “We ordered our stuff online instead of buying it locally, which is kind of sad.”

Jacqueline said she thinks more of her peers will skip the larger regional fairs because it simply costs too much to get there.

She wants to be a farmer when she’s older, she said, but isn’t sure about the future.

“It’s really hard to say,” she said, then shivered. “Who knows, I might be stuck in an office.”

But the same force that is a bane to large animal owners could be a boon for fair visitation this year. The cost to travel to Evergreen or Puyallup is too expensive for many in Northwest Washington. Instead of traveling far afield, more people are heading to the Skagit County Fair.

Don Jonasson, an advisory board member for the fair, showed animals here in his youth and has been involved ever since.

Jonasson said it seemed there were more people than usual at the fair on Wednesday and Thursday, the two days of the fair that were free to attend before 1 p.m.

Josh and Katrina Kallio of Sedro-Woolley sat in the sun with their 16-month-old daughter, Jaymie, Friday afternoon. They hadn’t attended fairs in the past but wanted to show Jaymie the different animals, said Katrina Kallio.

“On the drive over, I realized I hadn’t been here since I was 12,” she said.

Josh Kallio said if they went to any fair, it was usually a larger fair, further away. But not this year, Katrina said.

“Puyallup isn’t even on our list of things to do this year,” she said. “I figured this was close enough, and she got in free.”

* Kate Martin can be reached at 360-416-2145 or at .