Florida Fair News
Lake County Fair By Happy Norris, CFE
I have been asked to tell all I know about the garden that I plant for the Lake County Fair. Due to the fact that we do not own our grounds or have year around control of our grounds I cannot have a designated gar- den. Many years ago I thought it would be a great idea to show fair goers that you can grow your own food so I
built some “garden boxes” to do just that. I built 6 boxes and now have 9 boxes that I plant each year
about the first week in February to have ready at fair time in April. Most of the time it works out well but sometimes cold weather takes a toll on the young plants and we will have to re- plant. I have replanted as many as 4 times to get the garden go- ing. When I am ready to plant I go to the local garden
shop or big box store and see what plants are available to start the garden. Due to the time of year it is not always easy to find what you want but I always have tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage and herbs from plants and plant green beans, squash, carrots, to name a few, from seed. Tom Umiker can usually find me some used strawberry plants from the Plant City area “Hinton Farms” to transplant for our strawberry exhib- it.
I grow the garden around our shop area out of the
way of everyday grounds activities and at fair time I move the boxes around to the display area for public viewing. We set up around Tom Umiker’s Our Rural Heritage Display where Tom takes most of the credit for the beautiful garden, unless something doesn’t turn out just right then he lets everyone know that I grew the garden. We have several people that watch over the garden
very closely because they are looking forward to tak- ing home the plants after the fair, my mother being the main one.
Where was the convention held in 1978?
Who was president in 2001? What year was Joe Fair inducted in the Hall of Fame? Ever need a question answered about the history of the Florida Federation of Fairs? Well now you can go to the Federation’s website and view the history, updated to Sept. 1, 2016.
www.floridafairs.org
FAIRCRACKER-FALL 2016 17 Once the fair is over I give the tomato plants, and bell pepper
plants to mom, we harvest the potatoes and beans and whatever else is ready to harvest. I discard the dirt and plants, storing the boxes for next year. It seems like every year we have return visitors to come see
how good the garden is each year. One box consist of; 4- 2x8x8 for the floor of the box, 2-2x10x12 for the sides and ends of the box and 1-4x4x8 for the runners of the box. These boxes can be used for many years, I think we started doing the garden 15 years ago and we are on our second set of boxes.
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