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CANBY - They take the trash out, but the thing is, it's the trash of hundreds of people.

"Trash makes you feel gross, even if you don't get any on you, you just feel like crap," Tony Verhelst said of one part of the job as a worker at the Yellow Medicine County Fair in Canby.

The fair started Thursday and continues through Sunday.

Verhelst and Andrew Fokken of Canby have been working for the county fair board at the fair for several years.

The pair moved empty trash cans from one end of the fairgrounds to the other Thursday morning using a four-wheel, all-terrain vehicle. By the end of the night if not sooner, those trash cans would be full.

"They get heavy, sometimes it takes two people to lift one," Fokken said.

Loading and moving empty and full trash cans is just part of the job. They start at about 9 a.m. and expect to end each day around 8 p.m..

"We do an assortment of jobs," Verhelst said.

"Before this, we set up a canopy," Verhelst said of an earlier job.

"We washed the grandstands," Fokken said.

They wash the grandstands each day. "Last night they were dirty because the four-wheeler show was practicing and everything was dusty," Fokken said.

"After the demolition derby, it's the worst. The cars fling mud everywhere," Verhelst said.

The two take breaks from their usual summer jobs to work at the fair. Fokken said his employer knew he'd take days off during the fair, although last year, he couldn't work because he was in Army National Guard camp.

He squeezed the county fair work in before another round of National Guard training this summer.

"I leave for a week for more training, so I just got done with my other job," Fokken said.

"I work for my dad so it's not too hard to get the hours off," Verhelst said.

The pair started working as younger teenagers, and while the job doesn't required specific set of manual skills they do need "listening skills. People tell you what to do," Verhelst said.

The two don't carry two-way radios or cell phones because there are enough fair board members "roaming around" to keep them informed of jobs that need to be completed, Verhelst said.

"If we are looking for something do to we go to the fair board office," Fokken said.

While taking out the trash can be the worst part of the job, the best part is "getting into all the stuff for free," Fokken said.

They can watch the events, "unless we are working; then we don't get to watch," Fokken said.