How do you run an agricultural show during a pandemic? Here's how Horsham is doing it

By the end of Sunday, "social media" could be the answer.

On June 5, Mr Trump sent 200 tweets in 24 hours, which is roughly the number of updates the society's executive administrator Andrea Cross is planning to post on Sunday.

The reason? The society will stage the 2020 Horsham Show through its Facebook page.

It marks the culmination of the first virtual agricultural show in Victoria's history, which kicked off on May 1.

"At 9.45 there is a live cross for the official opening. At 9.55, it will be a recorded message from (Victoria's Agriculture Minister) Jaclyn Symes, and at 10 am I'll be live introducing our announcements of the winners," she said.

"Every five minutes after that photos (of entries) will be posted. We have been scheduling these posts across the week."

Other show highlights include a virtual fashion show at 12.30 pm, footage from old Horsham shows and the 2018 fireworks display, and a 20-minute virtual concert made from videos sent in by local bands which Mrs Cross has pieced together.

"Some of the artists are Colin Williams and Brett Schmidt," she said. "Most of them have a connection to the Ag Society."

For the pavilion exhibits, people took photos of their entries and sent them to the Agricultural Society, who separated them into their categories and forwarded them by Google Drive to the judges: Catherine Cotter, of the Irish Shows Association, Sarah Natali, of Horsham but currently in London, and Adrien, a woman from Narre Warren recommended by a listener who heard Mrs Cross on Melbourne radio.

"Everyone that has submitted a photo of their sponge plate or their patchwork quilt will be recorded within a post," Mrs Cross said.

"It's a full day, I don't know if Facebook will blow up with all these posts. That's the unknown: It's easy enough to set up, but we just don't know what the community's uptake of that will be."

Mrs Cross said the society was not relying on the virtual show's success to survive. Rather, she said the society wants to keep Horsham connected, and encourage them to become members and sponsors.

"The money we made from last year's show has been put towards my wages in creating this year's virtual show, which in turn isn't really earning any substantial income," she said.

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"Sponsors have dropped from 82 to six and three of them are new, but we're confident there will be enough grants that we can recoup some of our costs."

While the show proper will conclude on Friday, October 2 with a Zoom After Party, the event will technically continue for months: The Contactless Fleece Competition will take place in 2021, while the date of the Working Dogs Trials is yet to be confirmed.

Mrs Cross said she hoped to roll out Horsham's virtual plans to other Wimmera show societies as requested.

Ms Symes congratulated the show for soldiering on. She said Horsham received just under $10,000 in the 2019-20 round of Agricultural and Pastoral Society grants build a shearing competition stage.

"We are in conversations with Victorian Agricultural Shows about revisiting our guidelines and eligibility, so we can make sure we can pick up some of the ideas people have about how they might deal with operating their shows with ongoing restrictions on crowds," she said.