Around and around and around we go
Photo © Jerrianne Lowther
Merry-Go-Round at dusk, Alaska State Fair.

Miss Kitty's Travels

Alaska State Fair, Palmer, Alaska


Photo © Jerrianne Lowther
Giant vegetables set new records at Alaska's State Fairs.

The Friday before Labor Day turned out bright and sunny -- as pretty a late summer day as you ever did see -- so I wasn't surprised that the day's plans centered around giant Matanuska Valley vegetables and the 10th Annual Giant Cabbage Weigh-Off at the Alaska State Fair. I don't know what the big attraction to big vegetables is, as I never eat them, myself, but I do find the rat races interesting ... the gerbils are more my style.

There's something about Alaska's long summer days that makes vegetables grow like crazy in the Matanuska Valley and 2005 sounded like a banner year. State records for oversize produce were falling like dominoes: a 32.45 pound table beet (not a sugar beet!), a 168.6 pound watermelon, a 569 pound winter squash and a 942 pound Atlantic pumpkin, among them.


Photo © Jerrianne Lowther
Now what's a body to do with a 942 lb. pumpkin?


Photos © Jerrianne Lowther
Seth Dinkel's "Survivor" gets red; his cousin Brenna takes blue.

Giant Cabbage Weigh-Off

The cabbage growers put on the best show. The giant cabbage competition is said to have started in 1941 when a conductor on the Alaska Railroad bet one of the original Matanuska Valley colonists that he could grow a bigger cabbage than the colonist could. The bet was on! The colonist, Max Sherrod, eked out a win with a 23 pound cabbage ... very small potatoes compared to current contenders. Today, the state record stands at 105 pounds!

But the most irresistible competitors are kids growing cabbages bigger than they are. Miss Jerrianne's sentimental favorite in this contest is Seth Dinkel, who first won the competition in 2001 with a 92.5 pound cabbage when he was 8 years old. She put his picture, with his winning cabbage, on her web site that year -- click here to see Seth with his winning entry in 2001.

Seth, now 12 years old, was back this year -- and so was his 10-year-old cousin Brenna, another 4th generation member of this cabbage growing dynasty. Brenna beat Seth to first place in 2003, with a 77.5 pound cabbage when she was 8 years old. A few years back, their fathers (or was it grandfathers?) competed and one year their grandmother (or was it great-grandmother?) won the competition with a cabbage she tended in a flower bed at the Palmer Pioneer Home.

All of the contestants named their entries and they were asked about calamities and growing tips. Some of them wrote limericks and the announcer read them, too. They bewailed marauding moose, voracious slugs, pounding hailstones and pecking chickens ... and the splitting headache that sometimes occurs when a cabbage head grows so fast that it splits wide open and explodes. There was even a sad story about applying wa-a-y-y-y too much Miracle-Gro ... but the cabbage presumably died happy.

Seth named his cabbage "Survivor" after a moose munched on it. "Survivor" recovered and grew to 81.4 pounds ... not as big as his 2001 entry, but still bigger than any of the rest ... until the very last ... when petite 60 pound Brenna's cabbage, "Thidwick," tipped the scales at 85 pounds ... and took the blue ribbon. Seth gamely and graciously claimed the red ribbon for second place ... just wait until next year! And I do hope he munched on a mooseburger for supper that night.

Miss Kitty
Anchorage, AK


Photo © Jerrianne Lowther
Pygmy goat kids at play on Goat Mountain, Alaska State Fair.

Creative Eye Co-op ASMP/Alaska Mira.com

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