Today is a big day at our house--the first Fair entries. My wife works for days (sometimes weeks) getting ready for her Fair Garden Display at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. She has won the Grand Champion in this category 20 times or more and is a source of pride for her and our little farm. Even in bad years like this, she manages to present a good display. We also enter stuff in the "giant categories", although not the big ones--cabbage and pumpkin. When the season isn't good, we don't enter much in the collections--berries, apples, greenhouse, etc. Posters are made and props gathered. Everything entered must have been grown or produced on the property in the last 12 months.
Good luck to the Missus!!! So how far away is Palmer? Do you make multiple trips to get the stuff there? I would think that the giant stuff might require a crane to load it and a flatbed to transport it.
Thanks! That is one of the reasons we don't do the serious giant stuff--the cabbages only weigh in the neighborhood of 100+ pounds, but the pumpkins are well over 1000 pounds and have to be lifted with a crane or forklift. Both are usually transported on a pallet, and the pumpkins are grown on heavy-duty pallets and a greenhouse is built around them, them removed at time of transport. Palmer is 50 or so miles from here, but the roads are good. We stuff the wife's Camry to the brim and there is no room for a passenger, so I am home and she just left.
So for all that trouble with the huge stuff, is there serious money in it, or is it just bragging rights?
Top prizes for cabbage and pumpkins are: 1st-$1000, 2nd-$500, 3rd-$250. In addition, the winners also sometimes sell the seeds of their produce for big money to competitors in other areas. Howard Dill in Nova Scotia has made an industry out of selling his giant pumpkin seeds. Most giant pumpkin competitors have some of his genetics in their entries. Cabbage is much more complicated since they are biennials and have to be overwintered. I talked with one of the cabbage winners in past years and he got some of his genetics from a grower in the UK and paid a good bit for 5 seeds.
Spent the entire day at the Fair. Wife got a grand champion like she usually does for her garden displays. We also listened to an Everly Brothers imitator group which were very good and went on a hayride. It was the first one I have been on in over 60 years. This one was sponsored by the Antique Tractor Association.
What happens to a 1,000 lb. pumpkin when the fair is over? Does it make a lot of pumpkin pies or just left to decompose?
Here it becomes food for animals, but I can't speak for other competitions. There is a "ranch" south of Anchorage called the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center where animals with problems are rehabilitated or sheltered, and they are given all the produce form the fair that has been stored in the open and not deemed suitable for human consumption. The moose, bears and musk oxen there are happen to process it for us. https://alaskawildlife.org/
Yesterday was a busy day for me. I fixed a walk-behind lawn mower, sharpened the chains on two chainsaws, and felled two sizeable trees, bucked and split them. When I was in my 50s, that would have been a simple morning's work, but now it takes me all day and , as I told my wife, I was as tired as I could be and still walk. Keeps me going though. No frost yet, and most years in the past we have a frost by the first of September, so I hope it keeps up since the gardens and orchards are about 3 weeks behind what we expect. Our cherries are just now getting ripe, and they should have been ripe and harvested by now. Apples are still coming. Potatoes are not ready for harvest yet, and that usually is done by now. Beans were a total failure, both in and out of the greenhouses. Cabbages are still coming and should have been almost ready by now. Pumpkins are behind, but if they get to a certain point they will ripen in the house just as tomatoes and peppers do.