It’s fair season and I’m curious – is there one near you and do you attend?
The Virginia State Fair was a highlight of my childhood, an event only outdone by my family’s visit one time to the Iowa State Fair , where we saw Roy Rogers in person!
Since growing up and moving to a relatively big city, fairs were off my radar entirely, until I happened upon a good county fair – surprisingly in Montgomery County just outside D.C.
With the extremely high cost of land in the county, how could agriculture still be a thing there? I asked Washington Gardener editor Kathy Jentz, who explained that MoCo has a huge agricultural reserve (93,000 acres, about a third of all count land) that ensures we’ll always have lots of farm land and farmers. Kathy also says she’s seeing more participation by urban farms and home gardeners.
It’s a Farm Animal Show
This fair was started in 1945 for the purpose of “allowing 4-H members to exhibit their prize livestock, garden and home economics projects to the community” and to this day it’s where farm kids go to do just that. (Source – History of the fair.)
I wish I could enjoy the animals the way I did as a kid, though. These days I can’t help thinking of the final solution for those pigs, beef cows and “meat goats” especially. I will admit to enjoying the pig races, where the most fun is watching the kids watch them.
In our digital age these activities all seem all so outdated, so quaint, so Mayberry, but I’m so glad they still exist. Sure there aren’t as many exhibitors and competitors as back in the day when most of the schools in the county had 4-H programs, but still Kathy says the numbers seem to be holding steady. Even close to the Washington Beltway, some kids are growing up on farms and joining 4-H.
It’s a Midway
In my youth and even decades later I was an avid rider of rides, sometimes winning bets from friends for riding the scariest. Yeah, no more of that. But y’all have fun, okay? I’ll hold your backpacks.
It’s “Grandstand Events”
Sorry I wasn’t there for the lawn-mower racing, which I know that you crazy Rant readers would have loved seeing.
And can anyone explain what on earth a “Touch-a-Truck Event” is? Not it’s just one of the three kinds of truck events, because you can never have enough of them, I guess.
It’s a Vegetable Competition
Here’s just some of the tomatoes entered in the competition. I wondered what criteria the judges use and Kathy had answers straight from a judge (Miriam Mahowald) who spoke to the Silver Spring Garden Club.
First, this fair asks for five of each item item. a Master Gardener and veteran Fair judge, recently spoke to the Silver Spring Garden Club. She offered these tips (quoting from Kathy’s write-up):
- Check for disease and insect damage
- Avoid any obvious holes or bites, the main key in judging across all categories being uniformity. For instance, if a category calls for five carrots, all five should be of the same length and approximate girth.
- If you are entering peas, they should all have the same number inside the pod and for sweet peppers they should all be either three-lobed or four-lobed.
- Big is not necessarily better
- You can trim the stem ends of veggies such as beans.
- For cabbages, leave the outer, guard leaves on. Many entrants pull those off as they are not as pristine as the rest of the head, but judges will deduct points for that and they want to see the full heads.
The first year that Kathy ever competed, she entered her cherry tomatoes and reported that “My cherry tomatoes did not win, place, or show. Nor did anyone get to eat and enjoy them as at the end of the Fair week because they were infested with flies and I just had them composted. I think I’m giving up on this category and sticking with flowers for the next few years.”
It’s a Flower Competition
Next, Kathy tried entering flowers in the competition. From her report about the ribbons she won:
One first place ribbon I earned was for the Aster category. I had submitted one of my New England Aster blooms. When I arrived at the fair check-in table, the aster flowers had curled into tight, little balls and were swooning in the hot, humid evening air. I did have them in water, but they still were wilted and looked awful. Since I’d come all that way, I decide why not enter them and hope they came back by judging time 36 hours later. Taking that chance paid off.
Again I can’t help but wonder how they judge – from single flowers.
The arrangements and potted plants I’d happily judge. I seem to remember that back in the ’90s I helped enter some arrangements and pots on behalf of the Takoma Horticulture Club.
Why NOT Enter?
Kathy has been told that “all fairs are really hurting for entries and I should put some cut flowers in, so I did. It was easy and free. This fair gave a few dollars per ribbon awarded so I could splurge on some funnel cake with my earnings check.”
She also learned that even though I’ve moved to an adjacent county I could still enter this one, and she in mine. In fact, she was “begged to enter” my county’s fair a few years ago as they had “almost zero entries.” She did and won, “but felt bad competing out of my county.”
It looks like somebody should get on social media and encourage gardeners in my county to enter – somebody like me.
Source of photos with kids – MoCty Fair Instagram and Facebook.
Susan, you failed to mention the Montgomery County Master Gardeners’ demo garden at the MoCo Fair. It’s small, but beautiful. We staff it throughout the fair, take people on tours of the garden, answer gardening questions, do kids’ garden related games, etc. It’s a lovely garden, not to be missed when visiting the fair. Taffy Turner, Montgomery County Master Gardener.
Sorry, Taffy! I did see the booth but didn’t recognize anyone who was there then. Keep up the good work!
Susan, FYI regarding “touch-a-truck” … It’s an opportunity for the kids (and maybe some adults) to actually see a truck close-up and often to actually sit in the cab. The best ones are the fire trucks and big dump trucks. It’s a standard feature of ag shows here in the Midwest. Our local Kane County (IL) extension also runs a touch-a-truck program on its own. Tractors participate also, and some local farms have old tractors for the kids to sit on. (Probably told you more than you wanted to know!)
Thanks, Jack! Interesting. I probably would have enjoyed it when I was a kid – I sure didn’t like dolls or playing house.
The fam and I go to the California State Fair every year. It’s right here in town (Sacramento), so it’s an easy decision. We all go for our own things – daughter wants to see the goats, son for the food, husband for the arts and crafts competitions (especially the youth divisions – those kids are crazy skilled!), and I love to visit the Sacramento County Master Gardener’s demo garden. I get new ideas every year, though this year the idea was “don’t neglect your garden or it’ll look pretty sad”. There is a competition for flower arrangements, and for canned produce, but nothing for the plants or uncooked produce itself. That likely has to do with the size of the state, the problems with shipping, various ag quarantines from the different regions … Maybe it’s a good thing to leave to county fairs.
In 2019 I entered the canning competition and out of 4 jam entries, I won 1 blue ribbon (first place). The other entries were booted because I had misclassified them. There was no Fair in 2020 or 2021, and this year was somewhat uncertain, but when they said it was on, I entered 5 jams/jellies. And I won 5 ribbons – 1 red (2nd) and 4 blue (first place)! Next year, I’m aiming for “Best in Class/Show”, which is the real chest-puffer.
There is a Sacramento County fair usually, but that was cancelled again, as were some of the other local fairs.
Thanks for the great state fair report!
If you ever get to Maine during the fourth weekend in Sept. make your way to Unity to the Common Ground Fair hosted by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Assoc. It is an “old-timey, country fair” but has no midway, just vendors, an exhibition hall full of fruits, flowers and veggies, talks on social justice, organic gardening, a manure flinging contest (with a Harry Truman award), fleeces for sale, horse training, sheep dog herding demonstrations, herbal workshops…well, I’m sure you get the picture. It draws a crowd of about 60,000 over 3 days. That may not sound like much in an urban setting but it is huge in rural Maine. Come enjoy if you ever get up this far north! And bring your flowers, they do give ribbons with gift certificates to seed companies for the winners.