For 34 years, the annual Hawaii State Farm Fair has enticed throngs of thousands to brave the summer heat and humidity to celebrate the Islands' agrarian roots.

Yesterday, they did it again.

The winning formula hasn't altered much over the seasons. For years the tradition took place at McKinley High School.

When the entire road show moved to the Aloha Stadium in the mid-1990s, it remained essentially the same. For the past three years the colorful attraction has found its home at the fairgrounds of Kapolei.

Somehow, the livestock show, the carnival cotton candy and the farm displays and plant sales seem new and exciting each time.

Yesterday, the midway rides of the E.K. Fernandez Shows were all new to Raven Rafael, 6, of Salt Lake.

Wincing, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, Raven screamed horrified the entire time she was strapped into her seat on the Spring Ride — a sort of perpetual up-and-down parachute thrill.

When the ordeal was finally over, she happily told her grandpa, Thomas Kinoshita, 60, that it was all so much fun she'd like to do it one more time.

Moments later, though, Raven was to be found among the passel of kids crowding into the Meadow Gold Petting Zoo tent.

While the dwarf goats, gray rabbits and exotic llamas proved to be crowd-pleasers, it was Pearl, the miniature zebu from India, who won the affection of young and old alike.

Looking like a Brahma that had escaped from a Munchkin barnyard somewhere over the rainbow, the stunted bovine with a shoulder hump and pendulous dewlap captured everyone's hearts. She did it with little more than a supremely contented demeanor and two large, sage eyes.

A mere touch seemed to have a calming effect on otherwise rambunctious squealers.

Dawn Nozawa — who served as den mother, chief question-taker and keeper of the zoo — admitted there's something practically mystical about the animal.

"Pearl is a negative energy dissipater," explained Nozawa, as a half-dozen mesmerized kids gently stroked Pearl in silence. "She's a karmic cow."

Across the way, at another perennial attraction — the midway carnival games — the setup hadn't changed in generations. The ring toss, the balloon dart game and the shooting galleries remain the same basic attractions they were decades ago.

It's here that you'll find kids who've never grown up. At the basketball toss gallery, lanky men with long arms tried in vain to shoot balls through hoops at a buck a throw to impress young girlfriends and win a stuffed animal.

Instead, orbs bounced off rims or missed completely.

That's when Paul Moniz stepped up to have a try. Moniz — 5 feet 4 inches tall, age 60 — turned to his wife Judy and asked, "What color do you want?"

Black, she told him. One toss later, Moniz handed Judy a stuffed black dog, and the couple strolled away.

"I always make the basket," said Moniz, with the air of a man who wasn't kidding. "I always win. I don't know how. I can just do it."

One attraction at this year's farm fair is brand-new and old-fashioned at the same time: The Backyard Circus — not far from the racing pigs arena.

The circus is the brainchild of New Yorker and former Broadway stage manager Bill Carpenter and his wife, Lotte.

"It really is a backyard circus," Carpenter said. "Our idea is to have something really fun for families to do together. So, we invite up to 30 kids to come up, put on a little outfit and put on a circus for their moms and dads."

The Carpenters throw open their magic trunk, and within moments mortal children have been transformed into butterfly ballerinas, tightrope walkers and costumed lions jumping through hoops of fire (the flames look real enough, but the heat's strictly tent-temperature).

The grand finale is the human cannonball illusion, in which one of the performers seems to be fired from a cannon. The circus is immediately followed by a family-run Puppet Parade, featuring 8-foot tall "rod puppets" operated by the parents and children as they march around the midway.

The Backyard Circus Puppet Parades take place several times each day.

"I started on Broadway, and I worked my way down to the county fair," said Carpenter, whose circuses have become so popular he and Lotte now operate 10 Backyard Circus units around the country.

"What we've found is that the cornier it is, the better."

The Farm Fair continues tomorrow and next weekend.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.