Ag Fair 09

The Martha’s Vineyard Ag Fair started yesterday in West Tisbury. I rode my bike over after work to poke around in the exhibit barn. In addition to traditional catagories – pies, knitted things – they also have really excellent, strange, creative classes. Flower arrangements in tea cups. Arrangements inspired by songs. Sculptures made out of vegetables. The one in the picture above is made out of green tomatoes and peppers, and it won first place, which was really inevitable – it was even more miraculous in person.

I had a goal a few years ago to make over $20 in prize money, which I did. You make about four or five dollars for every class you win in the exhibition hall, except for the big competitive classes like painting and photography, which I never enter anyways. I entered my pet rabbit Duncan, some angora fiber from his last shearing, a few knitted things, some handspun yarn, and a couple of flower arrangements, and eventually received a check for $22 from the MV Ag Society in the mail, which I never cashed.

It is an heirloom now, a record I will probably never break, because I’ve stopped entering things in the fair. It requires levels of organization, enthusiasm, and creativity I have a hard time finding the first two weeks in August, when I’m basically running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But I love wandering the barn, checking out the sea of ribbons and jams, seeing windows into the interesting lives people lead, the secret skills people have. Who knew that the lady down the street makes the island’s best bread-and-butter pickles? Now I do, I guess.