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My visit to the Iowa State Fair 2011

posted by Tim Nafziger on 09/25/11 at 06:49 PM

This summer I attended the Iowa State Fair for the second year in a row with Charletta's parents and our friends Mustafa and Mais. This year my friend and fellow Christian Peacemaker Team member, Peter, joined us as well. As with last year, it was a beautiful sunny summer day. However this year the space had a familiar feel to me. For example, I knew where to find the fair's biggest bull. This year's champion was 6-year-old Bubba, weighing in at 2,768 pounds. As you can see, Peter (in the red hat) was properly agape:

Iowa's Biggest Bull

Bubba is a real light weight compared to last year's champion, Buster, who weighed in at 3,022 lbs:

Buster the

This year's Champion "Big Boar" was Tiny, a purebred Hampshire, weighing 1,196 pounds:

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He was only 16 pounds lighter than last year's champion, the more appropriately named Big D:

Word's Biggest Pig

Both of them were surpassed in weight by the 2011 Iowa State Fair big pumpkin, an unnamed vegetable weighing 1,295 pounds:

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Two-year-old Loverboy (also a Hampshire), the fair's Grand Champion Biggest Ram, was 483 pounds, though I must say his verifiable walking ability far surpassed his heavier fellow champions (bull, boar and pumpkin). Here he is sharing a moment with Peter:

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Of course you don't have to be big to win prizes, as this blue ribbon-winning kolrabi reminds us along with many other award-winning vegetables and flowers.

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The other thing that makes the Iowa State Fair famous is the Republican presidential hopefuls that come by every four years. I didn't spot any of them, but we did spot their favorite fried confection, butter on a stick. I didn't try any, but I heard it had a nice cinnamony flavor. That's Charletta, Mustafa, Mais and Peter in front of the stand:

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Peter and I did sample the somewhat more wholesome egg on a stick:

Peter with his egg on a stick


The other special event this year was the 100th anniversary of the butter cow. This is pretty much what it sounds like: a cow carved out of butter. I skipped the long line to see it (I couldn't imagine it was that different from last year's), but I did take a gander at the butter cow made of sand:

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And I watched the amateur butter carving competition. This team of equestrians made a horse shoe (you can see their template on the back). I thought it was the most technically challenging, but unfortunately the judges chose the much simpler butter birthday cake for the Butter Cow.

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Finally I ended my day in the antique building, where Charletta's fiddle teacher from when she was growing up was performing with her students:

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There were also craftspeople in this building, sewing and weaving in the space:

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The toughest of the craftswomen, the barbed wire bender:

Barbed Wire artist
 

Here are the rest of my favorite photos from the fair:

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Old Farm machinery
 
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I'll leave you with Sylvia's five-foot-long gourds, which weren't in the fair, but should have been:

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Nafziger_tim_2_thumbnail Tim Nafziger is a activist, writer, organizer and web developer. He lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Charletta where he attends Living Water Community Church. He is the administrator for the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and serves as Outreach Coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams. For more about his life, read his first blog post.