warts and sheaves

We hadn't been to the state fair in several years. There was a lot less competition in produce this year than the last time we were there. In past years there have been myriad classes -- basket of produce, wheelbarrow of produce, larger quantities of a variety of produce; classes in individual things, like tomatoes, corn, potatoes; classes for containers of wheat, oat, rye, etc, grains. This year there were far fewer classes, and far fewer entries in the classes that remain.

Surely they still have "tallest cornstalk/sunflower" and "biggest pumpkin"? If they do, we didn't see them.

My favorite was always the "warted gourds." Not just any old gourds, but warted gourds. The notion that people would proudly grow and exhibit something inedible and without (to my eye, at least) beauty -- something that is, as far as I know, not useful -- always struck me as amusing and surely done with a sense of humor. That is the way I always imagined it, anyway. Maybe competition in warted gourds was cut-throat, in its day.......

This year there was no separate competition in warted gourds, just collections of random gourds. Time marches on.

I offer you some warted gourds, mixed in with some wartless ones.





















We saw exactly one entry in each of just a few different "sheaf" classes. I understand why classes that only get one entry are likely to be dropped in the future, but it seems a bit sad.

This is wheat. Gorgeous stuff; no wonder people weave with it, leaving the heads on the stalks.

Not easy to get a pic that wasn't against a totally cluttered background. I crouched for this one, to get the relatively calmer ceiling, and still photoshopped it to reduce distractions.





















The oats were lying down. I got a pic of the grains, just as an interesting texture for possible digital collage, but no pic of the whole sheaf.

Can you guess what this is? The blue in the close-up is a clue......