ALTAMONT — Claire Guyer of Voorheesville is not running the Altamont Fair singlehandedly. Not yet. But then again, she’s just 16.

This week, she is serving as the only youth in charge of supervising a fair building — the Agriculture and Science Building. And, whenever she has several volunteers staffing that barn and can slip away for a few hours, she is in costume as a Storybook Princess.

As Jasmine or Belle, Claire is walking around the fairgrounds, mainly in the animal agriculture area of Ag Boulevard, between gates 1 and 2, because, she said, part of her role is to encourage people to visit the educational areas of the fair.

In addition, she has created a display for the Poultry Barn about the avian flu and its effects.

As the head of the Ag & Science Building, Claire is providing any help needed by the agencies that have exhibits there, including the United States Department of Agriculture, the Albany County Farm Bureau, the Mohawk-Hudson Land Conservancy, the Huyck Preserve, and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

The Ag & Science Building is also home to the only chickens at the fair, from a dozen or so eggs that fair officials got from an avian-flu-free-certified hatchery in Hudson. Officials hope that these eggs will hatch, during the fair’s final days, into newborn chicks that will charm visitors and that will even ride on a couple of tiny “amusement park rides” known as Chick Follies.

Multitasking is nothing new for Claire. Recently, around their kitchen table on Maple Road, her parents told The Enterprise about her wide-ranging interests:

— Volunteering to teach others to shoot traps at the Voorheesville Rod and Gun Club, where she started to learn to shoot at age 12, even though no one else in her family knew how to shoot. She started trapshooting, she says, “because I thought it’d be fun”;

— Singing in the choir at Voorheesville’s Clayton A. Bouton High School and singing for four years in the Capital District Youth Chorale;

— Volunteering at the fair and showing chickens, since she was in elementary school;

— Playing trombone in the band at school. She was first chair this past year;

— Running the soundboard at the high school’s Performing Arts Center — as a volunteer (“we’re paid in Welch’s Fruit Snacks,” she said) — not only for school events but also for events such as dance recitals by outside organizations that rent the center;

— Acting. She has some experience acting, although not as a princess. She actually played the evil sorcerer Jafar in “Aladdin” in the Voorheesville Middle School’s musical when she was in the eighth grade;

— Bass fishing. Her mother, Ann — who since this spring has been working as assistant in the Altamont Fair office — said that Claire often has what’s called “bass thumb” because she prefers to grab the fish by the jaw with her bare hand and pinch to hold on. ‘Their gums are like sandpaper,” Ann said. “I use a rag to hold them, myself”;

— Hunting. In addition to target practice, she also hunts with a shotgun, air rifle, or bow;

— Sewing. “I don’t sew,” her mother said. Claire Guyer said that she mostly taught herself. Her mother added that Claire started out by attending Nimble Fingers sewing sessions at the Voorheesville Public Library on and off for about a year. This is a sewing group run by local women who get together to sew each week and who will give tips to any children who turn up. Last year, Claire designed and made a prom dress for a friend. 

The two princess costumes she’s is wearing at the fair she sewed herself. For the Belle costume, she said, she used “60 yards of yellow tulle”; and

—Using machines. She also likes “anything with a motor,” Ken Guyer said, “whether it’s a four-wheeler, a tractor, the snowmobile, the lawnmower, the backhoe.” Yes, Claire agreed, adding that she recently “ripped out some stumps” around their property.

Claire Guyer is going into 11th grade but already knows where she might like to go to college. She wants to make a career of running soundboards. “I’m looking at the University of Rochester,” she said. “They have a five-year program where I can get my bachelor’s in audio music engineering and a master’s in electrical engineering.”

They will need to find a lot more scholarships first, Ann Guyer added. The school is costly. But there are not many schools that offer degree programs in audio music engineering.

And then, both her parents hope, Claire will find a job in her field, in the Capital Region.

After all, Ken Guyer said, she’s third-generation born and bred in Voorheesville. They hope that she’ll choose to come back to make her life here.

And so, presumably, do the Altamont Fair officials.