State Fair: How Does Your Garden Grow? (Part 3)

The fair isn't all arts, crafts, and cooking.  The gardeners, farmers, and livestock folks get their moment in the spotlight too.

Tobacco... in case you're wondering.  This is 'burley', the type that is used for cigarettes.

Beautiful hay.  I could have sat here for a long time.  It smelled SO good.

There were 4H education projects too.

This one was very interesting.  The title was "Do Plants Crave Sugar?"  Apparently not.  The 4H-er took a flat of plants and individually potted them.  Then he broke them into groups; feeding some just water, some soda, some diet soda, some coffee with sugar, and finally some tea with sugar.

It seems our great grandparents were right... drink water, coffee will stunt your growth!  Maybe that's why they called us 'little sprouts'!  LOL

Then we moved on to the produce section.

Oh my!  Wouldn't you love to see veggies this nice in the grocery store?

Makes me hungry just looking at them!

In the other corner were the BIG boys...

That blue ribbon watermelon weighed in at 255.5 pounds!

And this pumpkin...

... over half a ton!!  

They grow them on pallets so they can be moved for the weighing competition.

And finally the area that really set my stomach to growling...

Country hams.  Oh my.  They smell so good.

Moving along, we headed out to the barns.  Well, that was a disappointment.  They were basically empty!  The goats had finished and were gone.  The cows and mules weren't up til later in the week.

But the sheep were arriving...

"Who you looking at??"

However, the rabbits were still there.  I don't know when they would be judged but Tuesday they were lazy in the heat.

French Angora

Harlequin Blue Japanese

Forgot to photo this one's tag, but it was something "fox".

English Spot

Another French Angora... in chestnut.

And this big ol' Lop had the best seat in the barn!