This year’s May Day Queen for the 2025 spring fair was Harlee McBride. She was crowned at the Merced County Spring Fair kickoff dinner on April 12, 2025.
Being May Day queen, she had many duties and responsibilities for fair. Her duties include attending each and every event. With this big commitment it is her responsibility to represent the spring fair, herself and her FFA chapter. She also had the responsibility of giving each award recipient his or her award.
With these duties comes hardship. McBride shared, “The most challenging part was trying to be at multiple places at once.” She had many different places to be and a lot of walking to do while carrying around her big crown on her head.
Being crowned Miss May Day is a very special thing and a big thing for an individual girl each year. For McBride it’s a truly special thing to her because it means she is a part of something greater.
McBride stated, “I am able to promote agriculture in a way that allows me to teach generations of people the importance of sustaining agriculture.”
Something that she learned from this experience is that the fair is a place that is loved by everyone in the community including herself.
McBride shared, “The Merced County Spring Fair is a community within itself grown from its ability to draw people from all different backgrounds.”
The May Day process includes filling out an application and meeting with all the other applicants and the coordinators. Then the morning of the May Day kick off dinner, they meet at Españas and each one does an interview and then present their take on the topic of the year provided by the coordinators. Later in the evening at the kick off dinner, they announce the winner.
