I’ve done lots of interesting things in my life. I’ve put a
Whoopee cushion under my unsuspecting mother in one of State College’s nicest
restaurants; I’ve fallen into a canal in Venice (yes, that Venice); and I’ve been run over by a tow truck. But until the other day I’d never been to the
Pennsylvania Farm Show. Oh I’ve driven by the Farm Show Complex (it’s not just
a building, it’d definitely a complex) on my way to meetings lots of times, and have even been inside
for a car show, but that’s as close as I’ve come. Until now.
Before I get too far, I should explain that Pennsylvania, unlike its neighbors, doesn’t have a state fair. New Jersey has a state
fair, so do New York and Ohio and West (by God) Virginia and Maryland. Even
Delaware, the second smallest state, has a state fair. Pennsylvania, for reasons unknown to me, has a farm
show, and it takes place in Harrisburg in early January.
As a student in the RULE (Pennsylvania Rural Urban
Leadership) program I had the chance to go to the Farm Show to work in a food
booth run by the Pennsylvania Livestock Association. So faster than I’d get
thrown from a bucking bronco in a gay rodeo even if I were wearing my manly and
now even vintage Tony Lama cowboy boots, I said yes. I thought it would be a
great way to see the Farm Show and relive my junior high years when, along with
other members of the social leper caste, I served Hawaiian Punch at junior high
dances while the cool kids made out in the all-purpose room’s bleachers under
the watchful eyes of chaperones who were probably packing flasks of whiskey sours.
In case you were wondering, the mission of the Pennsylvania
Livestock Association is to develop and conserve the full agricultural and soil
resources of Pennsylvania by promoting the production and maximum usage of
cattle, sheep, swine, and horse industries within the Commonwealth. Nothing
exotic, mind you. No Andean triple play (llama, alpaca, vicuna); no bison, deer,
or even heritage jackalope. Venison tartare was not going to be on the menu.
Since I'd never been there before, I made sure to get to the Farm Show in time to do a little
exploring before my turn slinging burgers.
One of the highlight of the Farm Show, at least for the
producers of 6:00 p.m. news broadcasts in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is the butter
sculpture. Year after year fair organizers engage a sculptor to coax hundreds of pounds of Land O’ Lakes into some magical creation. This year the butter was formed into a vision
of a recumbent Paula Deen as an odialisque in the harem of Omar Khayyam. No,
actually it wasn’t that, it was something along the lines of a tableaux vivant of a farmer with various
agricultural products, rendered in a variety of different scales, just like the
train set I had when I was a kid, where the engine dwarfed the Lionel City station and the little buildings of Plasticville. The sculpture was
pretty cool, but I was a tad disappointed to learn that it isn’t
solid butter, it’s an inch and a half of butter over some sort of frame. In art
history speak, it’s not cast by the lost wax method, or even hammered as in repoussé and chasing, but created by a method
known as “frosting”.
The sculptor, Jim Victor, seems to straddle that stalk of
celery that separates the visionary artist from nut job (so to speak). He has a killer web site with great photos of more than a few choice food sculptures that make up his portfolio. While there is something
charming about an NFL player rendered in food items you can buy at Subway, or
Andy Warhol’s Marilyn in marshmallows,
my favorite was Salute to the Lunch Lady, sculpted in butter for the 2012 New York
State Fair. Surely if anyone deserves a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant
it’s a guy who can create a bust of Fidel Castro from vegetables.
After the butter sculpture, there was a mushroom sculpture
and a spud sculpture. They get little play
from the newscasters, but this year, at least, were more successful as works of
art.
Once you tire of ogling vegetables (and believe you me,
there were some beauties in the varnished gourds category) there are commercial
booths to take in, just like at a state or county fair.
This woman was selling some sort of ratcheting pruner. If I
didn’t know better, I’d say she was the model for the Lunch Lady in the New
York State Fair’s butter sculpture. She was working through those logs like a hot
knife through, well, butter, but still had time to pose for a photo. I wanted to
ask if she saw Lorena Bobbitt as a role model, but there were some actual
customers there monopolizing her time.
If you already have enough ratcheting pruners you can buy boots and license plate surrounds and pots and
pans sold by guys wearing headsets like Madonna on one of her concert tours. If
the pot-shilling booth babes would wear rocket nosecone bras as Madonna did
when she was young enough to wear Revere Ware, I might actually buy their
patented non-stick magic sauté and sometimes burn whatever you’re cooking pans. Then again, I might not. But I’d at least
listen to the spiel and enjoy the Maidenforms in stainless with copper bottoms.
Since the Farm Show is really an indoor state fair, there are cows, sheep, goats, swine, horses, and rabbits, too. An entire room larger than a high school gym was devoted to poultry. There are chickens, chickens, and more chickens. Some even
look like one of my favorite cartoon characters, Foghorn Leghorn. I say, I say, that's a joke, son.
I had barely scratched the surface of the poultry room when
it was time to hit the Celebrity Grape Stomping. Apparently someone thought this was a good way
to promote the Pennsylvania wine industry—by having celebs crush grapes like
Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in the famous episode of
I Love Lucy. Except for one State
Senator who could have won the Celebrity Gum Chewing Contest, I hadn’t heard of
any of the stompers, though my friend Patti pointed out Matt Barcaro, the
eye candy on the Channel 8 News. He
didn’t have much competition in the looks department from his fellow grape
stompers, but unfortunately there was no swimsuit portion of the pageant. He did, however, look as if he were ready for the new, improved version of Bert Parks to ask him if he were in favor of world peace. I didn’t get to see the talent segment, I mean his stomping technique. Just before the competitors started stomping, it was time for my shift at the food court.
The food court was really something--all the food booths are located in a food court bigger than any you'll find at an average sized shopping mall. My friends and I worked
the 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. time slot, so when we started it was about as busy as it
could get—dining fashionably late is not part of the Farm Show experience.
There were a bunch of livestock based sandwiches, including roast beef, pulled
pork, Italian sausage and beef sausage, hot dogs, and, if you didn’t feel like
having your meet encased in a bun, lamb stew. Oh and there was a steak salad,
but who goes to the Farm Show for salad? Sandwiches were $4, the steak salad was $5,
hot dogs, $2.50 (same as in town, as the punch line of the old jokes goes) and
pink lemonade $1.50. It was somewhat low
tech--there were no cash registers, just cash drawers, so you had to do the
math in your head as you engaged in witty repartee with the customers (at least I thought it was witty repartee) as you called the orders back to the food runners. To say it was busy is an understatement. According to the Livestock Association, by the end of the
Farm Show it had sold more than 7,600 hot dogs, 1,300 pounds of Italian Sausage
and over 6,500 pink lemonades. I think my coworkers and I felt as if 90% of the orders were during our three hour shift.
According to the Farm Show program, I missed lots of good
stuff, from the Farm Safety Quiz Bowl to the Celebrity Cow Milking and Draft Horse Pleasure Show. So I’ll go back next year, hopefully in time for the Celebrity Putting a Whoopee Cushion Under Your Unsuspecting Mother Competition. That
would really be my idea of fun.
