Iowa State Fair: So Much More Than Food on a Stick

Sunday was Fair day.


We got to the Fairgrounds just before 10 a.m. and it was clear we were in a new kind of territory.


Still all het up from the Farm Heritage Days, we took in some pretty fine machinery.


Although it looks like a fairground ride, this is some kind of rake, its raking bits all folded up for travelling. I was beginning to fall in love with farm machinery.


We then headed to the Elwell Family Food Center to see “Make it With Lard,” which turned out to be a rather poorly-attended bake-off. Instead of watching the judging, we perused the cases full of pickles, dinner rolls, fancy cakes, and cookies.



Next, we headed across the fairground to the chicken washing and blow-drying demonstration. It was on this journey that we sampled our first fair food, a Dutch letter, specialty of the community of Pella, near Des Moines. It’s a pastry letter filled with almond paste, and it’s pretty darned good.

When we took a picture of the sign, the vendor insisted on holding one up for us to photograph so the folks back home would know what we were talking about.

On to the poultry barn, and a lot of roosters. These guys were not in line to be washed.



Unlike this guy, nicknamed Killer.


Or this very calm fluffy little lady. She just sat in the washtub and waited to be scrubbed down. She did not seem quite as easy-going with the blow-drying.


The chicken demonstration was not as exciting as had been imagined, but was still worth seeing. After that, well, it was just about lunch time. We split up – Sara to get a pork-chop-on-a-stick (not actually a stick, but the bone of the chop) and Kelly to get a veggie corn dog (because, tragically, she is profoundly allergic to hot dogs).

Both these items were a great success, and we continued our travels. Next on the agenda was the Household Cat Show, which, surprisingly, proved to be a show of household cats. It was standing room only as people watched three judges examine and talk about the 12 contestants. The grand winner was this long-haired orange cat ironically named Munchkin.


The crowd favourite, however, was a Singapura kitten named Lyle (who happened to be Canadian). Lyle, who came in second, was like a small liquid bundle of energy ... hence the lack of picture.

During the cat show, Sara had to leave to get to the La Quercia demonstration at the Food Centre, which turned out to be an even more poorly-attended bake-off than the one we had seen at the beginning of the day: one contestant. However, she met Kathy and Herb Eckhouse, the owners of La Quercia, and got us invited to the prosciuttificio the next day.

Then it was more wandering to see the sights:


Of course we saw the Butter Cow, a 5 1/2 by 8 foot beast made from 600 pounds of Iowa butter.


That's enough butter to cover 19,200 slices of toast. Not that you'd want to use this butter -- it's recycled and reused for up to 10 years. This year, to mark the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, there was also a Butter Neil Armstrong.


A visit to the heritage buildings brought some classic Americana, both visual and musical.



And we watched some Future Farmers of America show their sheep. It was serious business, as this mother-daughter conference shows.



Sheep-rearing is business worthy of a temple.



But there also happened to be room in the sheep barn for a bit of fun. It seems that hanging plastic spiders from the ceiling and dropping them on passers-by is a State Fair tradition. I'm just glad that I saw it from this angle.


Some of the newly shorn sheep were very fashion forward:


We also happened on the Belgian horses being prepared for show. It was like a form of ballet.


We visited a virtual temple of grain:







And stumbled across a bunch of antique machinery:



This served to ramp up my love of farm implements to as-yet-unexperienced heights, and Kelly finally gave in: before leaving, we bought a miniature (4 ½ foot) red International Harvester windmill, which seemed to be a necessary addition to our vast back yard. More on this later.


And of course we sampled the food. Total food consumed: 1 fry bread, 3 corn dogs - 2 veggie and 1 regular, deep-fried onion-battered green beans, 2 Dutch letters, 2 pork chops on a stick, 1 Wonder bar (ice cream on a stick). We bypassed most of Iowa's many foods-on-a-stick, including chocolate covered bacon. Here's a little video essay on what was available.


The disappointment of the day: we didn’t eat enough to actually feel sick.

The best part of the day was right at the end, when Kelly morosely contemplated taking public transit home with a windmill after spending 9 hours at the fair … and then realized that we had a car.


Or maybe it was this: the sunset-bathed State Capitol reflected in a neighbouring building:


One thing we know for sure: the Iowa State Fair is a grand state fair!