When Emily Heffner of Wayne Township learned that she’d won two statewide competitions at this year’s Pennsylvania Farm Show, she was excited to call her grandmother to share the news.
That’s because it was her grandmother, Mary Stemmler of Mary D, who taught her how to make jams and jellies, lessons that helped Heffner become more self-sufficient, and also to earn those first-place prizes in canning and jarring events at the annual agricultural event over the weekend.
Heffer is among a number of people from Schuylkill County who are competing at the 109th annual PA Farm Show, which runs through Saturday at the Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg.
Though Heffner had competed at the Schuylkill County Fair before, this was her first time entering the state event, and she won first for both her canned apple and grape juices, and second place for her cherry jam and her assortment of five jams and jellies.
“It’s exciting,” she said of her successes at the fair, and also of the canning and jarring processes themselves, which she has been happy to teach friends in recent years.
“It’s cool to take stuff that your family grew with your own hands and turn it into shelf-stable products,” she said. “And it’s nice knowing all of the ingredients that are in them.”
Heffner, 31, made her grape juice and grape jelly, for example, from two small concord grape plants on their large Jersey Acre Farms property in Wayne Township.
“It’s a lot of fun,” she said.
An assortment of jams and jellies that Emily Heffner of Wayne Township entered in competition at this year’s Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg. (SUBMITTED BY EMILY HEFFNER)
Also competing this year is Rachel Noll of Pine Grove Township, who entered her breads and cakes in about 10 home living categories. Noll, 37, is still awaiting word on how she fared this year, but at past shows has won a number of prizes, including for her white bread rolls.
This year two of her daughters, Nicole, 7, and Charlotte, 5, also competed, having submitted entries in the children’s contests, and several other family members are also competing in various categories at the show.
Baking is a family tradition that Noll learned from her mother, Lois Roop, and last Thursday, before the submissions needed to be dropped off at the farm show, Noll’s home kitchen was a busy place with each item getting its turn in the oven.
Noll is surprised that more people from across the state don’t enter, especially since it only costs $1 for each entry, and the top three in each category earn cash prizes, she said.
Even more of an incentive to Noll than the money, though, is the enjoyment she gets from baking, and the excitement of learning how her creations stack up against bakers from across Pennsylvania.
The “fancy-shaped” category for baking rolls was especially fun, she said, since it gave her a chance to show off her artistic side.
“I’m very curious to see how I did (with the judges),” she said. “I love the competition of it.”
This year’s farm show features fan-favorites like the 1,000-pound butter sculpture, which this year depicts how dairy cows power Pennsylvania.
Visitors also come for the farm show food court, which includes traditional favorites such as milkshakes, baked potatoes, fried mushrooms, roast beef sandwiches, honey-sweetened waffles and ice cream, potato doughnuts, pierogis, potato cakes and loaded French fries.
Also at the show are thousands of competitive agricultural events, homegrown cooking demonstrations at the PA Preferred Culinary Connection, and more than one million square-feet of hands-on agriculture education opportunities and chances to engage with the representatives from the state’s agricultural industry.
Spectator events range from horse pulls to square dancing to a mullet contest.
The event is Pennsylvania’s state fair and showcases top competitors from 108 county and local fairs. It is also meant to display the diversity and quality of Pennsylvania’s agriculture industry, the innovative people who make it thrive, and the faces the industry’s past and future, farm show officials said.
Admission to the show is free. Parking is $15 per vehicle.