State Farm show catapults champions from Butler County toward a broader stage
For 16-year-old Morgan Teets of Slippery Rock, the 2023 Pennsylvania Farm Show meant a chance to take skills she’d been building for years to a statewide community. The event marks her fourth year of participation in the contest, she said.
“You get to meet new friends from all over Pennsylvania, and it’s pretty cool to meet everyone,” she said. “And it’s a different level of friendship, I feel like.”
“It’s definitely different from a county level, but I’m usually pretty successful,” she said. “What I’ve trained for makes me better.”
Teets, who won the Butler Farm Show’s celebrated Eagle Bowl along with other members of her family, won second place in her class for her lamb and third in her class for her pig. She qualified for showmanship with both animals too, winning her third for her lamb in that category and fourth for her pig in that category.
The state farm show, which is underway in Harrisburg, brings contestants from across the state, including Butler County, to a greater audience this week. Butler Farm Show member and secretary Ken Metrick estimates 50 to 75 people turned out from Butler County for the event.
"For those who kids who raise project animals, they are serious about what they do,” he said. ”This is a big deal for them."
Metrick said he has participated for decades now and always looks forward to coming back.
“It’s like a family reunion,” he said.
“It's really good for the kids,” he said. “They get to meet a lot of people from other counties and compete at a higher level. It's stiffer competition and makes them sharpen up their showmanship skills.”
He added that one group of contestants from Butler had participated in the event earlier this week, with another group arriving to compete on Wednesday.
“I always tell people, even if you're not a farmer, you should come here once,” he said. “Take a day or a couple days and come experience everything. It's hard to explain it if you haven't seen it.”
Teets encouraged people unfamiliar with farming to ask people who are familiar with it to learn more.
“Ask questions,” she said. “Reach out to people that know what they’re doing, because they’ll always tell you.”
Teets has worked since April to train her lamb, washing and blow-drying wool, and since September to train her pig, using a tanning bed to help groom the animal, she said. For both animals, improving showmanship serves as a core goal, she said.
This work becomes harder during winter weather, she said.
“You don’t always want to do it, but you still got to go out and work your animals,” she said.
But the payoff is rewarding though, she said.
“I look forward to competing against everyone and then just having fun with friends and family,” she said.
Beekeeper Melanie Fessides of Lancaster Township also experienced a similar reward for months of hard work. She brought home first place awards for her “dark honey” category and another category called “specialty pack,” which provides recognition for a gift pack of honey products she assembled, she said.
In Fessides’ case, this pack consists of extracted honey, comb honey or “chunk” honey, honey cream, tawny candles and lip balm.
The “dark honey” category describes fall honeys, in contrast to the lighter-colored honeys of the spring, she said. Judges classify the categories of honey by color, she said.
“The main thing that affects the color and the taste of the honey, just throughout the year, is how different plants bloom in the spring than what would bloom in the fall,” she said. “So you’re going to have different nectar sources in the spring and the summer, whereas in the fall, your goldenrod and your knotweed are your primary nectar sources in the fall ... and that always produces a stronger flavor.”
Judges evaluate contestants based on the cleanliness and uniformity of the jars, consistency between levels in the jars, and the absence of crystals, foam or other flaws in the honey, Fessides said. They even consider imperfections within the glass used to store the honey, she said.
Fessides, who won a third-place prize last year, saw her second year of participation this year, she said. She’s glad she received the chance to learn and grow from feedback she received last year, she said. She hopes to continue building on her skills as a beekeeper to pursue the Best in Show Award next year, an award which encompasses all different classes of honey to recognize “the best of the best” from all categories.
