Sonoma County Fair launches barn project to honor late ag champion

The Sonoma County Fair is launching a $1.8 million fundraising campaign to finance a permanent agriculture education center to be named in honor of Richard Kunde and his late wife, Saralee McClelland Kunde.

The new facility would enable the expansion to year-round educational programming and pay tribute to the Kundes’ long-running contributions to agricultural interests and to the Sonoma County Fair, where they first met.

“Saralee was a real force here,” said Fair Manager Tawny Tesconi, who formally announced the campaign Wednesday, the eve of the fair’s 2014 opening.

A dairy rancher’s daughter who grew up showing livestock with 4-H and later grew wine grapes on the family’s Wine Country estate, Kunde died of cancer in January, leaving plans for a new educational center at the fairgrounds unfinished, Tesconi said.

But the fair intends to pick up where she left off, and is laying the groundwork for a 12,000-square foot structure to be called Saralee and Richard’s Barn, located on the site of the fairground’s goat and sheep barn.

Most of that building aside from the show ring will be demolished to make way for the new facility, Deputy Fair Manager Katie Fonsen Young said.

“The barn is going to be in her memory and to celebrate all the things that she and her husband, Richard, did,” Tesconi said.

During the annual county fair, it will house Sweet Lil’s Farmery, an existing exhibit that offers children a chance to “visit” a miniature farm, with donkeys and baby pigs, hatching chicks and baby ducks. Named after Lillian McClelland, Saralee Kunde’s mother, it includes a faux cow that children can “milk.” Its purchase years ago was funded by the Kundes, Tesconi said.

Relocating the “farmery” moves it closer to the center of the fair, so more fairgoers will experience it, Young said.

During the remainder of the season, the facility would be used for special events, including Ag Days, hosted each spring by the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, farm-to-table food demonstrations, wine judging competitions and other activities, officials said.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday authorized continued planning and fundraising for the project, to be managed by the Sonoma County Fair Foundation and led by Honorary Fair Board Director Pat Emery.

The construction is estimated to cost about $1.5 million. The fair board also hopes to raise $300,000 for an agricultural education endowment fund.