The Unionville Community Fair, in its 94th year, is such a wonderful tradition. I love donning my Holstein-print apron and catching up with my "Fair friends" each October, among them longtime volunteers Bonnie Musser, Debra Swayne, Dave Salomaki, Karen Statz, Danielle Chamberlain, Berta Rains, Terry Hawkins, Bonnie and Ed Lewis, Ray McKay, and so many more.
I knew that the Exhibit Barn had been fixed up since last autumn -- but wow, what a difference. New skylights let in far more light, the roof no longer leaks, and the stall partitions have been removed, greatly opening up the space. It looks terrific, and I was glad I ran into Landhope owner Dixon Stroud on Thursday and got a chance to thank him.
The number of entries to the Fair varies greatly from year to year. I had only 11 entries in the youth baking category that I ran, but the adult baked goods and the canned and preserved foods tables were almost overflowing.
One mother entered her daughter's cookies on Thursday morning -- they were beautifully decorated, almost like old-fashioned marbled paper. She told me her daughter was determined to create them all by herself.
"Don't help me, Mom!" she kept saying (the mom said she insisted on putting them in the oven and taking them out, though).
There were lots of house plants, artwork, crafts, Lego creations and photography entries, and given the very wet summer we had, the specimen flowers and the garden vegetables had a respectable showing.
Martin Reber, the head of the youth vegetables category, was especially delighted with one entry: a family that was brand-new to the Fair entered a lovely collection of vegetables that included peppers, beans and three different types of okra. One vegetable neither he nor I had ever seen before was a spiky yellow-green gourd called a bitter gourd (Momordica charantia). It's edible (and in fact is used in traditional medicine) but tastes "grossly bitter," Martin said.
Students from the professional gardener program at Longwood serve as judges for the flowers, plants and vegetables classes and take their work very seriously, critiquing and discussing each specimen at length and leaving detailed comments on yellow sticky notes.
I overheard one saying that given the number of entries, there really ought to be a class for "other tomatoes."
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