CENTRE HALL — Christie Kocher watched in sadness.

Down came the Breezy Farms banner hanging over her family’s traditional section in the dairy cattle barn at the Centre County Grange Encampment and Fair.

Her husband was removing it Thursday afternoon, preparing to move their Holstein heiffers back to their Pennsylvania Furnace farm.

“It’s the worst part of the fair,” she said.

As the 138th fair drew closer to an evening end, she looked back on some of the highlights for her family. Her five children made more than $4,000 selling eight pigs, and one daughter, Casie Kocher, 20, won a reserve junior champion award for her heiffer.

Despite all the work facing the Kochers, it could have been worse. Their dairy cattle and a lot of equipment went back to the farm earlier in the week.

“You can’t get everything in one trip. There’s not enough room,” Christie Kocher said. “You need several trips up and several back. If you ask my husband, he’d say his truck could drive itself.”

Catch of the day

Jacob Knapp, 7, had the touch.

At the Tara’s Fish Bowl game — 25 ping-pong balls for $2, one in a bowl wins a goldfish — the Bellefonte youngster took home two new pets.

Asked his secret, he said, “You need to believe you can get one.”

The booth attendant, Rose Campbell, said about 2,000 fish had been given away during the fair. She stayed busy as children squeezed in a few last hours on the midway.

“It has been a delight working here,” she said. “It’s been overwhelming sometimes, but seeing the excitement on their faces makes your day.”

This year marked her return to the fair after 37 years. She hardly recognized the place.

“It’s a lot, lot bigger,” she said. “It has expanded so much.”

Wanting S’more

Rose Eyer, of Pleasant Gap, held her family’s latest acquisition: a deluxe marshmallow roasting stick with 10 prongs for sticky feasts.

“We’re impressed with it,” she said.

One thing was high on her to-do list for the fair’s last day.

“Not spend any more money,” she said.

Heading home

For Dan Walters, of Bellefonte, leaving began by carefully folding a huge gray tarp.

He and his daughter, Hope Ann Dorey, pulled it off their family’s tent Thursday afternoon to avoid morning dew making it harder to pack away today.

Walters, a longtime tenter, said the fair for him always ends incomplete.

“You know there’s some food you didn’t get to try,” he said.

Hope Ann Dorey, who came from Florida for the fair, leaves with a different regret.

“It’s people you didn’t get to see,” she said. “That’s my saddest part.”

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620. Follow him on Twitter @CRosenblumNews