SYRACUSE — Farmers from across the globe gathered in Syracuse last week to attend the New York Farm Show at the state fairgrounds, and I joined them.

They came to sell, to squeeze into established markets, to visit with friends, and to see the latest agricultural gizmos available. The air was festive, international, and still homey. The agricultural community brought renewed life to the region’s restaurants and hotels, and highlighted how much of New York’s economy is based on farming. In short, the farm show was a blast.

I’ve lived in New York for almost two decades, but I hadn’t yet been to the state fair. My editor warned me that the grounds were huge: According to the fair’s website, the fairgrounds encompass 375 acres. With temperatures climbing to 14 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday, the farm show was providing shuttles from the parking lots to the fair buildings. Heartened, I bundled up and headed out.

I followed the crowd — there really was a crowd on a February Friday morning. Parents pushed strollers through the snow, and old men pushed bravely forward. A volunteer told us to wait where we were; the bus shuttle was full and another was coming around the corner. The second shuttle took its time, so parents decided they needed the exercise. The rest of us followed the stroller brigade.

“Have you been here before?” I asked the couple next to me.

“Yes. Your first time?” they asked me, and I nodded.

“Wendy,” said the woman, removing her glove and offering to shake my hand.

“Do you have a ticket?” her husband asked me. When I said ‘No,’ he said, “You do now.” He happily handed one to me.

The two of them chatted with me all the way to the farm show. They raise beef cattle in Canastota (Madison Co.), and they came to buy wrap for their hay.

“To order it, or to take it home?” I asked. They were there to purchase and bring home, as they did every year, they said. In my inexperience, I hadn’t realized vendors bring enough quantity to sell.

They asked what I raise — lettuce, broccoli, and pumpkins on my tiny plot — and laughed with me about picky customers at farmers’ markets. (After fingering green leaf lettuce on my table, a bored girl asked me if I had red lettuce, instead. Another visitor told me she only bought pumpkins in October, so she couldn’t buy mine in September. Wendy suggested I join a CSA and avoid the markets. I agreed!)

We commiserated about squash bugs and Wendy told me about her daughter’s favorite zucchini bread.

“You still have some?” I was surprised. My freezer is full of grocery-store brands by February.

“I never run out,” she said. “I have a good processor and I make sure to put enough away.”

I asked if they would be trying the beef sundaes advertised on the farm show website. Piles of beef are covered with noodles, mashed potatoes, and gravy and sold in a bowl like an ice cream sundae.

“He’s never been able to get one. He usually works on Friday and can’t come until Saturday, when they’re sold out,” Wendy said about her husband. As we parted ways, my new friends pointed me in the right direction.

I entered the first building, which was packed with tractors. I heard someone talking about Facebook. I saw signs directing visitors to phone-charging stations. I smelled beer. Yes, I had arrived at the farm show, circa 2015.

In the next building over, I met my friend, Heather, who was staffing a booth with her husband. Heather’s parents raise beef cattle, and her husband, in addition to his work with the scale vendor he represented at the show, works in Ohio’s corn and soy fields. While he went to a seminar — another activity I hadn’t realized was going on at the farm show — Heather and I managed the booth.

Little Mattison Pollic, who is only 3 years old, climbed up on a scale meant to weigh cattle. Her family came to the farm show from Richland (Oswego Co.). The flashing numbers on the scale distracted her from the bag of maple-flavored cotton candy she clutched, but only for a moment.

Huge, beefy farm workers challenged each other to stand on the scale. One weighed in at 350 pounds. I was shocked that someone so young and healthy could weigh 350.

“I would have guessed he was 365 or 380 pounds,” Heather said. She has more experience than I do gauging weights. Beyond that, she has a degree in agricultural sciences and crop management. I trust her judgment.

Over the intercom came the announcement, “Last call for hot beef sundaes.” It was only noon on Friday. I hoped Wendy and her husband had found them in time. Heather said that vendors had been given the option to pre-order the sundaes, but they had chosen not to.

Across the way from the scale booth, a French-Canadian company was hawking livestock watering systems. Some were the size of a bowl. One was so large that a little boy climbed in and 10 more could have fit next to him.

A SaMASZ tractor vendor from Poland strolled past our booth. Heather and her husband had met him and his partners at dinner the night before. The SaMASZ dealers are trying to break into the American market, Heather said. When we went for our own stroll through the fair buildings, we saw other tractors: John Deere, Farmall, International Harvester — all familiar, American tractors. I recognized Kubotas, too. They’re newcomers from Japan, with plants in the United States.

I hadn’t seen Mahindras before, but Heather knew them. They hail from India, but also have plants in the United States now, as they compete, like the Kubotas, for Deere customers who can’t afford American tractors anymore.

I couldn’t believe the size of the combines at the show! One was so huge, I almost clambered up to the cab just because it was a mountain to be climbed. I declined to have my photo taken in it. Used to New York farms as I am, with orchards or animals, and hard-scrabble hay fields, I was shocked to hear Heather say that they lose several of those monstrous pieces of equipment in the fields each year.

I suppose that, when you work 13,000 flat acres, you’re bound to lose a combine or two. The farmers don’t worry, she said; the combines will turn up, eventually.

Heather’s husband gave us two dining tickets, so we lunched in the Empire Room. Farmers in scuffed and holey work boots and ripped Carhartts smelling of livestock helped themselves to catered salad with vinaigrette, bowtie pasta, chicken, and meat pies. The dance floor and bar area in the middle of the fairgrounds was almost too much. Heather, familiar with Ohio’s state fairgrounds, complimented New York’s architecture. I did, too, and I vowed to bring my kids back on a warmer day.

There were plenty of kids there, beyond the stroller crowd: Future Farmers of America teens wandered the grounds, and 4-H teens ran the entry lines. Girls walking together were everywhere, and families took the day off for a “field trip.”

We bemoaned the loss of family farms, and the tradition of passing farms on to the next generation. Dairy farmers in my area are aging out and selling off. In Heather’s area of Ohio, however, farmland is too expensive for new farmers; her husband is working for others until they can buy their own farm.

We saw spinning brushes meant to scratch and clean cows, and memory foam intended for cattle stalls. We saw a sweet young farmer who asked us to enter a raffle for his family’s products, and we saw retractable flag poles designed to replace traditional flag pole pulley systems. The smell of maple candy, maple-coated nuts, and maple-flavored popcorn was all-encompassing.

Somewhere, I heard a vendor call, “Horses?”

“Cattle,” said his visitor. “Horses are hay burners.”

“Yes, they are,” the vendor said.

Yes, they are, I agreed, thinking of the cost of my kids’ riding lessons.

I looked forward to the stroll back to my car, but it wasn’t a stroll — it was a full-out hike. Why didn’t I take the shuttle? It must have been a mile, or more. I followed the hearty Carhartt crowd that didn’t bother with hats or gloves and that seemed to have no trouble in the wind, the cold, and the slush.

I barely survived the chill wind, and I had enough time to ponder as I trudged along how similar walking in winter slush was to walking in warm sand on a beach — difficult, heart-poundingly similar, except for the bitter difference in temperature. I nearly died.

Well, not really, but my face was wind burned by the time I found my car, even though I’d covered my face with my scarf. Unlike my friend Heather, who wore a stylish and thin jacket I would consider only in mild October, and unlike those unflappable farmers I walked out with, I am not cold-hardy. The farm show was fun, the fairgrounds were beautiful, and I will be back — next summer.