Cabbage Contest

The first time we visited Alaska I wasn't prepared for what we would experience.  After all I grew up on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains in a rural area, I thought I knew what to expect.  What I didn't expect was a vast wilderness, mostly unpopulated, settled by true pioneers of hardy stock.  The land itself is breathtaking and those that live there are worthy of it's rugged splendor.

As is usually the case when we travel, we are interested in the land and what it produces.  I hesitate to call it agriculture, since they have very few "farms" as such.  However, many can and do survive on what they can grow, catch or kill.   They have a very short growing season, in southern Alaska about 105 days, less further north.  That means that many of our slow maturing vegetables and crops just won't have enough time to grow.  Although they do have one advantage we don't have.  During the summer they may have as much as 20 hours of sunlight a day.  It's rather like growing plants under a grow-light in a greenhouse.

The crops that do well there are our cool weather crops that respond to the mild temperatures and the wet climate.  We saw rhubarb in an abundance, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce of all types, strawberries (in beautiful hanging baskets), and lots and lots of flowers.  It is as though the plants themselves know that they have only a short period to produce so they do it as dramatically as they can.  Everything is super big due to the extra sunlight, I guess.

Alaskans make a big thing out of everything being bigger.  They proudly tell you that they are the biggest state (2 1/2 times as big as Texas), they have the biggest bears (polar and grizzly), the biggest beavers (100 lbs.), the biggest mountain (Mt. McKinley) and the most airplanes and pilots.  Which brings us to the state fair.

The delightful girl who was our tour guide on the train ride to Anchorage, proudly pointed out that Palmer, AK, was hosting the annual State Fair.  She told us that her sister was carrying on a tradition started by her grandfather, carried on by her father and now it was her turn.  She was trying to win the biggest cabbage contest.   This is roughly equivalent to us wanting to win the State Fair Steer competition.  

This is serious business.  She had raised three cabbage plants in her back yard.  She started by building a frame and putting metal cross bars in it.  She then filled it with soil and planted her cabbages.  Then followed days of precise feeding with fertilizers and growth stimulants.  She harvested the first one a few weeks earlier to enter in another competition to feel out the opponents.  It weighted in at 73 pounds.  It was her smallest one.  To harvest it they used a sawsall to cut the stem and hooked an engine hoist to the frame to pick it up and put it in the pickup truck.  She has great hopes for the biggest one, which measures over 8 feet across, and will be her State Fair entry. She is carrying the hopes of her father and grandfather on her massive head of cabbage, that she will be the third generation to win "biggest cabbage".

All I could think of is what a mountain of slaw that would make and how many people it would take to eat it all up.