Josh First's Blog

Want to feel good? Go to the PA Farm Show!

The Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, PA, has been an annual event for something like 160 years. Over that time the Farm Show building complex has grown and grown and grown. The large, beautiful, evocative Art Deco facade remains visible on most of the buildings seen from Maclay and Cameron Streets, while the buildings themselves have multiplied in size and number, especially over the past 25 years.

While the Farm Show itself is ever so slowly evolving with time, mostly from technology changes, its direct connection to agriculture and farm life remains. Agricultural organizations like 4H and FFA remain front and center in much of the activities, including the kids’ bull riding rodeo and horse barrel vaulting competitions we watched last Saturday night. Hands-on activities include all kinds of food, fiber, and animals like sheep, goats (the baby goat snuggling place returned this year and it was overwhelmed with people wanting to snuggle with adorable baby goats), cows, horses of all size, chickens and chicks, ducks, rabbits, pigs etc. are all available for close-up viewing and or holding and petting.

While there is always food available in abundance, I was pleased to see a revamped and larger PA maple syrup stand, with more products. Hate to admit it, but I am a big fan of real maple syrup. When I am not making it myself in my own maple stand, I buy between four and six gallons a year. While 99% of maple syrup is made through the reverse osmosis process now, with no cooking or maybe a very brief flash heat at its end, it is still a unique flavor that I crave all year long.

I make my own maple syrup the old-fashioned way: Collect sap from my own maple stands with old fashioned spiles and buckets, wood or propane fire under a large stainless steel evaporation pan with a spigot, constant stirring, regular addition of maple sap until the syrup reaches an almost-done consistency. Then I tap it off the evaporation pan and finish it off in pots and pans inside the house on the stove top. Takes me about 16-20 hours to boil down sixty gallons of sap. Fact: Nothing commercially available tastes anything like my own home-made, deep brown, super rich maple syrup. I think the heat really augments the maple flavor. Anyhow, I am digressing.

Old tractors, new tractors, out-buildings, clothing, boots, hats, you name it, all kinds of neat stuff is available. The only cost is parking, and that amount depends on where you park.

If you are looking to feel good, because Lord knows we all have burned out on politics and everyone is looking for opportunities to shake off the misery, go visit the PA Farm Show. It runs until this Saturday night. You will not regret it. If nothing else, you will be reminded that the food we all eat does not in fact grow in styrofoam containers in the grocery store. Rather, our food is grown on farms, and then through an elaborate and energy-intensive route it ends up on our dinner plate. Unless you grow your own food, this is how you eat. That lesson alone is a worthy reason to take kids to the PA Farm Show.

Nina got a new Stetson at the Farm Show