How We Fared at the Fair

For us, the Carp Fair is like the farm Olympics.  It is so exciting to find out how we fared in all the categories we entered.  It is also fun to calculate our final prize tally of gold, silver and bronze place finishes to see how we did overall.

I am pleased to report that the Kehoe MacLeod family of Gael Glen Farm had a very respectable showing at this year's Carp Fair.  We placed in exactly half of the categories we entered, with six 1st place finishes, five 2nd place finishes, six 3rd place finishes, one 4th place and one 5th place finish.

First Prize

1. Outdoor Decorating Challenge

We made the local newspaper!

Our fancy plaque that we do not get to keep. :(

2. Grapes

3. Marigolds, larger than 2"

4. 9 day pickles

We wonder if the other two entries were disqualified?

5. Display of honey products

My display before judging

Proof that I won!

6. Samples of beeswax

Second Prize

1. Carrots, longer than 5"

2. Jalapenos

3. Other hot pepper (chili peppers)

4. Ale
5. Lager

Third Prize

1. Apples

2. Carrots, shorter than 5"

3. Red peppers, sweet

4. Pears

See our sad looking pears on the right?

5. Berry honey wine

6. Apple cider

Fourth Prize

1. Honey, light coloured

Yay, we placed!

Fifth Prize

1. Maple syrup, extra light

Our highlight item was winning 1st place for our beeswax which came with a $20 prize!  I was also very happy to place in the honey category (even if it was 4th).  This is a competitive category with lots of entries and it is won every single year by the same two people who always take up the top two spots.  It is pretty much my goal in life to beat them in the honey category.  Though this year I did beat them in both the beeswax and honey display categories, which is something, but some day I will beat them with my honey!

Our major disappointment was that we did not do better in the pickling area.  Happily, Ian won with his 9 day pickles which justified him spending nine days making them! I also thought that our display of three herbs was really nice in comparison to the other entries so I was disappointed that we did not place here; maybe the judging panel did not consider spearmint an herb?

Our biggest surprise was placing with our pears and apples.  As you can see, our pears are in a sorry state.  Not only does my pear tree refuse to produce normal sized pears - I get these miniature pears instead - my pears were ripe really early this year so I tried to preserve them in the fridge for several weeks until fair time.  This was not particularly successful and I ended up having very few green pears to choose from for submission.  

Likewise, the apple trees in our orchard are very young and are not yet producing full sized apples.  It was also not a particularly good apple harvest year for us.  The apples that we submitted came from the wild apple tree near our back compost bin.  We are shocked, not only that they placed, but that they actually beat out other entries!

Overall, we are very pleased with our results and really enjoyed attending this year's fair.  We loved the petting zoo, corn dogs and free chocolate milk.  We even had a chance to speak with an exhibitor about how to clean and begin preparing sheep fleece to be made into wool.  This will be handy information come spring when we shear our sheep for the first time.

Thank you Carp Fair for another great year and we are already thinking about how to improve our entries for 2015!