The Hallockville Museum Farm’s Country Fair returns this weekend with twice the reason to celebrate: the museum farm’s 50th anniversary and the fair’s 44th run.
But before the wagon rides and tractor pulls and a cornucopia of other kid-friendly activities begin, the real drama plays out under the judges’ gaze — where jewel-colored jam and hefty squash compete for ribbons and bragging rights.
The heart of any country fair is the contests, and tomorrow afternoon, ahead of the fair, a small panel of judges will fan out across tables at the farm to evaluate the jam and jelly entries and a spectrum of vegetables, including potatoes, pumpkins and squash.
For first-time Hallockville judge Jaymee Sire — a broadcaster turned Food Network host who moved to the North Fork last fall — Thursday’s work will draw on equal parts research, practice, farm-bred intuition and game day preparation.
Sire, who has judged at meat-heavy competitions like Brisket King or Burger Bash, said the trick is to “eat very light” and arrive with an “empty stomach.” For Hallockville’s mix of jams, jellies and vegetables, she said, “a fresh palate” is optimal and staying hydrated helps more than people think.
Sire is new to North Fork gardening, but not to agriculture.
“I grew up on a farm in Montana,” she said, with memories of her grandmother’s “epic gardens.” Now that she’s tending beds of her own here, she’s eager “to see all of the entries and hopefully get inspired.”
What separates a good jam from a blue-ribbon jar is balance, she said.
“I don’t like things overly sweet. If a label says strawberry, I want it to taste like strawberry.” Texture matters just as much.
“You don’t want it to be too runny … You also don’t want it to be too thick and firm,” she said with a laugh, admitting that “it’s kind of a Goldilocks situation.”
‘Small batches’
Getting a recipe just right is no abstraction for the people who have won at the fair in past years.
Laura Klahre, the organic berry farmer and small-batch jam maker behind Blossom Meadow Farm in Cutchogue, has racked up honors from the International Flavor Awards and the national Good Food Awards. But for her, hometown validation hits different.
“There’s nothing like winning locally,” she said. “You get that street cache, and it’s really fun to meet new friends and neighbors.”
Klahre’s secret is simple: “organic fruit in small batches.
“I only make eight jars in one batch, because if you ‘plus it up,’ it doesn’t have the same flavor and consistency.” Like fine wine, she said, great jam “starts at the farm.”
Her two entries this year are both new to competition at Hallockville.
One is “queen’s jam” (drottningsylt in Sweden) — a 50/50 blend of red raspberries and blueberries. The other is a truly inventive blueberry-violet jam.
“Strawberry jam can stand by itself,” she said. “Red raspberry jam can always stand by itself. But blueberries are kind of one note — it needs a friend,” she said. Years ago she tried extracting nectar from local violets, only to end up with a “vegetative” flavor. The breakthrough came when she turned to European violet liqueur: a whisper of floral that you “don’t even realize… is violet,” but that “gives the finish of the jam a lift up.”
Klahre talks about jam like a winemaker talks about a prized vintage.
“You taste it, it sits on your palate and then it has a finish — so you could break it up into three story parts: a beginning, a middle and an end. So when I’m coming up with recipes, I’m always thinking ‘Does it have a finish? Does it hit you when you first put it in your mouth? How do the two flavors play against each other?”
Klahre said that since “the soils on the North Fork are so fabulous, it should always be about the fruit. All of my jams are fruit first.
“I just love jams. They show the work of all the wild pollinators that we have on the North Fork: bumblebees, the cellophane bees, the mining bees [and] the moths that pollinate all of our fruit.”
While the organic berry farmer has no expectations of victory (“It’s definitely not guaranteed. The competition is fierce.”) she said that if she does win a ribbon this weekend, she’ll celebrate by offering free jam tastings on Sunday at Panoramica, the space-themed café in Peconic.
‘A good potato’
The vegetable tables are where the contests turn tactile: heft and surface, clarity and color and a judge’s thumb pressing into the shoulder of a spud.
Joanne Zilnicki, a third-generation grower at Zilnicki Farms in Riverhead and a first-time Hallockville judge, knows her way around a potato.
“I’m well aware of what a good potato looks like,” she said, describing the ideal as“without blemishes, without… scabs,” uniform and firm enough to promise freshness.
Yet appearance isn’t everything.
“It’s really your insides that matter,” Zilnicki said. “Sometimes, even if a potato looks a little ugly on the outside, it’s still going to be nice inside.”
Still, she said, “when you judge it, most of the time, a lot of it will go on appearance.”
Feel is important too. A soft touch can be a sign a tuber is “old already,” she said, maybe on the edge of rot. Scabs or scarring often trace back to what the soil gave, or took, across a growing season.
The contests are also being judged by Sandra Menasha, a vegetable and potato specialist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead.
Sire, who plans to lean on the panel’s produce specialists for the fine points, said she learned recently that potatoes can be “sunburned,” and that those green patches can indicate the presence of a toxin, which can give the spud a bitter taste.
Award-winning pumpkins and squash carry their own balancing act. At some fairs, Zilnicki said, there’s a “largest pumpkin” category, but size alone is no guarantee of first prize. A small pumpkin can take the ribbon if it’s “uniform … looks nice,” has a “nice stem” and is clean underneath, where blemishes hide. Beauty helps, she said, but quality triumphs.
Both judges said that a ribbon means a lot.
“You have a deep sense of pride,” Zilnicki said.
Sire agreed.
“To see the smiles — and the bragging rights! For literally the next year! That’s … really exciting.”
Hallockville’s 50th-anniversary program layers the schedule with old and new.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days (rain or shine), families will find wagon rides, a petting zoo, pony rides, a kids train and children’s activities. The Long Island Antique Power Association will run tractor pulls (Saturday at 1:30 and 3 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m.), while Hallockville’s interpreters lead historic tours from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. There are blacksmith and sawmill demonstrations, folk-arts booths, a bake sale and live music. Tea-making demos pop up at 11 a.m. Saturday and again at 2 p.m.; on Sunday there’s a beekeeping demonstration from noon to 3 p.m., and children’s book readings with Yvonne Dagger.
The schedule is packed with activities for kids — children’s tug of war at 11 a.m. and again later both days, potato sack races at noon and 2 p.m. — and curveballs, like a dog that paints (Sunday at noon and 2 p.m.) and an entire patch of artisan glass pumpkins to wander through. Food trucks and craft vendors will be spread throughout the grounds, according to organizers.
Admission is $12 for ages 12 and up, $10 for seniors, veterans and active-duty military, $8 for kids 5–12, and children 1–4 are free. To thank the community and celebrate the museum’s golden anniversary, Hallockville is cutting admission in half on Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon.