Harvest Monday - 29 September 2025 - Blue Ribbon Edition #9

 Established in 1876, The Deerfield Fair has become our area's largest agricultural exhibition. For nine years now, I've been entering and displaying my best vegetables in the competition. While I had little confidence I would repeat last year's personal "triumph" in winning Best of Show, I still wanted to do well, and get a clean sweep of first prizes or something in the Top Ten in Show.

Fair prize ribbons

Alas, that was not to be. Here are my results (crop, quantity needed for display, and placing):

Raspberries (one pint) - First

"Trident" poblano hot green peppers (5) - First

"Escamillo" sweet orange peppers (5) - First

"Red Mushroom" hot red peppers (5) - First

"Jacob's Cattle" dry beans (1/2 pint) - First

"Sophy" zucchini (2) - First

"Marconi" sweet red peppers (5) - Second 

"Lincoln" leeks (5) - Second

"Juliet" tomatoes (10) - Second 

So I was a little disappointed, but The Kitchen Goddess reminded me that at least I didn't get any third places.

I was hoping the Red Mushroom peppers would be interesting and attractive enough to get in the Top Ten. But nope!

Red Mushroom hot peppers

Here was Monday's harvest, mostly of things I wanted to sort through for the fair. That's the first harvest of leeks.

Monday harvest

TKG also picked and sorted raspberries for a very attractive fair entry. By rights the award should go to her.

Raspberries

On Saturday, the day after we went to the fair to see how we did, I had another harvest.

Saturday harvest

I wanted to show off a couple of things from this harvest. The California Wonder bell peppers are really large. I only had four of similar size and shape, and needed five for the fair. I bet it would have been a winning entry. We had stuffed peppers that night with them, really delicious, but we couldn't even finish one.

California Wonder bell pepper

I wasn't sure real Tabasco peppers would do well in my northern climate, but I have been surprised. The plant itself is tiny, but loaded with fruit.

Tabasco pepper plant

I've never been pleased with my attempts to ferment peppers to make hot sauce, so I traditionally use a simple method of just cooking them in vinegar and salt, blending, and straining into bottles. But since I had authentic Tabasco peppers, I decided to give fermenting another go with them. I followed the instructions our Harvest Monday host, Dave, published on September 1. That is to cut them up, mix with 5% salt by weight, and allow to ferment for a week. On Saturday I started the process.

Tabasco peppers with salt for fermentation

Of course, TKG had to chime in, and tell me that I should have cut the peppers smaller and added water before fermenting. I told her that was not in the recipe. We'll see who's right in a week (sure hope it's me!). As of Monday, only a little liquid has been drawn out of the batch.

I always like to gaze in wonder at the giant pumpkin display. This year there were only three entries. Maybe it was just too tough a year to grow them. The winner, at 2170 pounds, is a couple of hundred pounds lighter than last year's winner. Also note the longest squash (type unspecified, maybe a Trombocino?) in the top of the picture (136").

Largest pumpkin and longest squash

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading and putting up with my showing off. Again I encourage you to find a local fair, learn the rules, and enter your crops. It's really fun.

And a special note...Dave at HappyAcres.blog has decided to discontinue the Harvest Monday forum. I've learned a lot from his posts and others who have linked to it, and it's been fun all the while. Thank you so much, Dave, for your hard work over the last ten years. As for me, I'll continue to post when I have something interesting to say, but it probably won't be on a weekly basis.