Last week Charlie took us to the 119th Washington County Fair, one of an ever-shrinking number agricultural expositions around the country. Growing up I’d been to the Harford Fair but never actually witnessed livestock judging, or a tractor pull, for that matter and tried my best to make up for that. Watching kids pull (and get pulled) animals easily five times their weight was quite a sight.

Most of my morning was spent casually observing the King Arthur Flour Cake contest where four judges had to taste 25 or so chocolate cakes from 8 to 11 a.m. Not a bad job, since I always like to start the day with a bit of chocolate cake myself. The contest’s overwhelming popularity, was, however, one minor detail made the judges’ jobs quite a bit more difficult. Last year there were five entries, this year, as I mentioned, there were about five times that many. Cakes were judged on flavor and their inside/outside textures. A particularly delicate cake with appealing, uniformly applied icing, and a tender crumb, could hope to receive as many as 90 points off the bat.

After the cake contest I was lucky enough to run into Kate Monroe, the 2009 Washington County Dairy Princess (pictured far top-left, with tiara). Elected by a team of dairy ambassadors, Kate’s mission is to educate consumers about Wash. Co. dairy by speaking with the media and educating families about health benefits. At home, Kate has about 30 cows, including 10 Ayrshires for the milking. Above, she was pictured with Lilly Snyder and her holstein Poppyseed. While I’d never heard of a Dairy Princess program before, I had me the Chilton County Peach Queens earlier this summer.

As a light rain was starting, I headed over to the tractor pull arena to eat some fried pickles with ranch dressing and watch giant machines pull 1000-pound weights.

Skip is the producer of The Gourmetro. He liked watching the cow judging more than the tractor pull. Read about his culinary travels through the South as Dan over at ‘Ham Sandwich.

]]> http://www.thegourmetro.net/2009/09/farm-dispatch-the-washington-county-fair/feed/ 3 http://www.thegourmetro.net/2009/08/farm-dispatch-mucking-the-barn/ http://www.thegourmetro.net/2009/08/farm-dispatch-mucking-the-barn/#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:26:57 +0000 Skip http://www.thegourmetro.net/?p=234

After clearing about two dozen goats and alpaca out of the barn’s shade, Adam, Dan, and I proceeded to clear out two weeks of, well, muck. Thankfully, heat and humidity were relatively low and the flies stayed with the animals. Luring them out into the field went well for 15 of them, but a handful still had to be forcibly moved. We got used to the smell, as much as that’s possible, shoveled, pitchforked, and scraped 10 wheel barrels, and were left with a relatively clean barn. A thick dusting of lime when down to help absorb moisture, followed by a bit of bedding. All told it probably took us an hour. This entire process would have been much easier if we all hadn’t eaten Belly Busters at Bob’s Lunch (post tomorrow). The giant 1-lb burgers (with bacon and cheese) however local and delicious, were leaden lumps in our stomach through the smelly mucking process. Today we move on to the chicken coop, which Charlie promises won’t be as gross. We’ll see.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtTWqHG8D08

Skip is the producer of The Gourmetro. Mucking a barn isn’t so bad, just don’t eat a 1-pound hamburger first. Read about his culinary travels through the South as Dan over at ‘Ham Sandwich.