Taylen Reed couldn’t get off from her job bartending at Kito’s Kave in Petersburg to attend the 52nd Southeast Alaska State Fair, but she did manage to enter 10 pieces of her hand-made jewelry, including “Tree of Life,” a wire-wrapping pendant on amber that earned a giant, purple department champion ribbon and two other ribbons at the fairgrounds early this week.
“I love trees and always wanted to make one that was 3-D and wearable,” Reed said in a phone interview. The piece uses 80 wires, some twisted separately and then combined to create branches. Reed said she took up wire wrapping four years ago, in part to work out of a depression she was suffering. The “Tree of Life” took 15 hours or more of meticulous work.
Reed said she was looking forward to getting a picture of herself with her ribbon. She’s never been to the fair. “I want to go real bad. I was trying to this year, but it didn’t work out.”
On Wednesday, officials and volunteers were judging baked goods, crops and flowers exhibits in anticipation of Thursday’s opening of the four-day event at noon.
Dozens of judges worked Sunday at Harriet Hall, poring over hundreds of handmade creations, including a vase fashioned from 7,200 wood tiles made by Gregg Lynch of Ketchikan in the woodworking division.
Lynch’s vase, that won the woodworking division, stumped judges Ed Hays and John Carlson of Haines. Hays is a 44-year woodworker and former woodshop teacher at Haines High School. Carlson is a lifetime carpenter and cabinet-maker.
“John (Carlson) said there are books written on that technique that neither of us have read,” Hays said this week. “(It) is just amazing. What’s really impressive is that the inside of the vase is almost as smooth as the outside.”
The day before the fair opened, Lily Jo Ramsey, 10, was excited to see a division champion ribbon on “River Poems,” a hand-made book she entered in the fair as a school project, featuring her own, form-line drawings of Alaska animals. She said she was thinking about just entering her animal art when her mom suggested she include poems.
Her other fair entries included two watercolor paintings and a sketch of her cat, Raja Paws.
Lily Jo also was looking forward to Friday’s wearable art show, where she’ll be modeling a cape and dress ensemble entitled, “Picture This,” made of 194 of her mom’s photos of nature and flowers “that never got used,” she said “I finally found a use for them. I’m re-purposing them.”
Lily Jo is taking over for her mom Mandy Ramsey, who walked the wearable art runway three times. “I’m a tiny bit nervous, but I’m excited as well,” Lily Jo said.
Fair officials this week were emphatic about this point: Except for those to be displayed in the livestock barn, no chickens will be admitted to the fair.
Fairgoers might be tempted, as a “chicken training demonstration” is among fair attractions this year. Sidney Campbell, raptor program manager for the American Bald Eagle Foundation and manager of the critters in the fair’s livestock barn, will offer the workshops.
Campbell said that before new trainees at the eagle center are permitted to work with raptors, they’re trained in bird training by working with chickens, silver-laced Wyandotte hens, specifically. “The first step of raptor training is chicken training.”
Raptors are trained to step on a scale daily, to fly to a targeted point, to step into a travel crate, to perch on a glove, indoors and outdoors, to spin and to fly around in a loop. “They don’t go anywhere I don’t ask them to go,” Campbell said.
Chickens can be trained to do many of the same things, she said. “You can train just about anything. I know people who have trained fish. One of my old interns trains sturgeons.”
Campbell, who has trained her pet cat Bleu to “high-five,” said the same techniques used on chickens can be used on dogs, and even your spouse, but she added the caveat that the chickens in her demonstrations have been in training for their entire lives. “They know how to learn.”
Campbell will preside over the menagerie of animals in the livestock barn this year. They’ll include two goats, four baby ducks, rabbits and a horse and a pig.
The Catholic Women’s hamburger booth is taking a hiatus this year, due in part to scheduling and COVID-19, but in its place Susie McCartney and Vija Pelekis will be serving up “Mom’s Burgers,” including vegetarian and fish patties and ones made of high-grade beef.
Fair assistant director Maddie Witek labels a woodworking exhibit that won department champion, created by artist Gregg Lynch of Ketchikan. The handcrafted wooden vase is made of 7,200 tiny wooden tiles.
McCartney, who previously cooked fish tacos and Cajun food at state fair booths, said she and Pelekis will use as many local ingredients as possible. Filling in for a legacy booth like the Catholic Women’s is daunting, she said, but added that she’s of Catholic heritage. “We’re hoping to satisfy a variety of palettes.”
Youngsters riding the fair merry-go-round this year get their choice of 22 gaily colored horses painted in 2019 by assistant fair director Maddy Witek. Last weekend, Grace Comstock, 7, had picked out her favorites, including a sea-foam-green colored pony with a fuschia mane. She said she liked it for its “realistic” eye.
Witek said she thought children would like the bright colors she chose for the steeds. “I painted them in a way that there’s no blue horse next to a blue horse. They’re all a little bit different. I got to know them pretty well. It was actually a lot of fun.”
The fair runs through 3:30 p.m. Sunday, ending with an all-comers whipped-cream pie fight in Raven Arena. The fair’s theme is, “Live Free, Pie Hard.” Fair schedules are available at the information tent just inside the main admission gates.