TUNBRIDGE — The sands of time and the wreckage of a flooded White River are no match for the working steer show at the Tunbridge Fair.

Amy Ferris, a longtime 4-H volunteer, started prepping for the event — a storied tradition of agrarian life in Vermont — two weeks ago, dragging back into place rubber mats that the swollen First Branch pinched from the oxen barns in the July floods. She swept out silt from stalls where the high-water level from the flood of 1978 was commemorated in now-fading green paint.

4-H, a national network of youth organizations with a dozen clubs in the Upper Valley, came to Vermont in 1949 to instruct young people in advancing farming techniques. The dairy cow and working steer shows put on by the organization have been a consistent presence at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds since the organization’s arrival and now help keep that past alive.

Ferris honored three graduating seniors at the showing arena on Thursday afternoon. Landon Campbell, Layne Mullen and Ferris’ son, Joey, were presented with personalized poems from Vermont writer and farmer Stuart Osha. The poems lament the dying traditions of agricultural life and celebrate those that still practice them.

In the days of old, steers were used to clear rocks from hillside fields to use to build stone walls and foundations. Now, most of the action is in the arena.

The trio of boys were honored, Ferris said, “mostly to help them recognize how important it is to us that they’re giving back to the fair and the younger kids,” she said. “And we know that they’re doing something that other teens might not totally understand.”

Having her own child in the ring makes the proceedings more emotional, said Ferris, who is a teacher at Brookfield, Vt., Elementary. “But with all of them, it’s been about watching their growth as teamsters and as people,” she said.

The contestants are judged by the control of their animals as they guide them through motions with a long, commanding stick, called a goad, and a series of orders: “step up,” “back,” “woah,” “gee” to steer them to the right, “haw” to nudge them left.

Campbell, of Randolph, has been showing oxen since he was 8 years old.

He said he looks for compatible size and color when choosing the pair of animals he’ll train with. On Thursday, he presented a duo of Dutch Belted steers named Charlie and Spooner. The bovines were harnessed together with a wooden yoke and named after a deceased Randolph farmer Charlie Spooner.

Campbell is hoping to go to heavy equipment operators school in Brentwood, N.H., after graduating from the Randolph Career and Tech Center in the spring.

The events at the Tunbridge Fair on Thursday and the remainder of the weekend are the only time he gets into the showing arena. Campbell once presented his steers at the iconic Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield, Mass., reverently called “the Big E” by those in the know, but it was too “commercial,” he said.

“This one in Tunbridge, we’re actually in old, real barns,” Campbell said.

Mullen, of Tunbridge, is a senior at Thetford Academy. Riding the fair circuit, he’s crisscrossed the Northeast “all summer long” with his steers, Mullen said. Next he’ll be heading to the Fryeburg Fair in Maine next month.

He’s worked for Eustis Cable Enterprises in Brookfield for two years and is planning to continue after he graduates from Thetford Academy. But he’ll find time to keep showing, Mullens said from the stalls after Thursday’s presentation, where he had nailed a framed photo, dated from the 1950s, of his grandfather, Thomas Mullen Sr., holding the reins of his own set of steers.

Mullens’ specialty in 4-H is pulling, a competition in which yoked animals drag weighed-down sledges against a timer. The Tunbridge Fair is the only time he likes to present his steers for matching and showmanship.

“It’s my hometown,” he said.

Mullens and Joey Ferris, of Braintree, walked away from Thursday’s event with blue ribbons.

Ferris’ family recently sold their dairy farm. “We weren’t losing any money, but we weren’t making any money, either,” he said. Still, the Ferrises didn’t sell all of their land, and he plans to keep farming there when he graduates from the White River Valley School in the spring.

For Ferris, the showing tradition is hardly a dying one.

“Well, we’re doing it now,” he said. “And we’ll keep doing it.”

Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.