Alaska State Fair/Giant Vegetables

It was those same early farmers who decided to celebrate the end of their brief growing season by organizing a harvest festival. Seventy years later, the Alaska State Fair is still the best place to see the state’s agricultural bounty.

It’s a crowd sporting parkas and sweaters in mid-August. Exhibitions featuring sledgehammers, and chainsaws. 

You’ll find whale bones, bear skulls, and much more.  This is a decidedly sub-arctic take on the concept of a state fair.  Alaska’s statement to the world that, “Hey, we grow things here, too.”

It’s quite a surprise to “lower 48) visitors like Brendan Meiers from New Jersey. “I didn’t even know there was agriculture here,” he says.  There is, and each year upward of a quarter-million Alaskans and slightly chilled visitors from the other states see it in all its offbeat variety.

While Alaska’s total crop yield may be small compared to the lower 48, the crops that do grow in the Land of the Midnight Sun can be huge.    Just ask giant vegetable grower Scott Robb.  Each morning he bids his family farewell as he goes to tend his garden.

“I come down here and tell them before I leave the house, I’m going to walk the green mile,” Scott says. “ Because when I come down here, I walk back and forth. By day’s end, I might have walked a mile.”

Laughs Scott’s wife Mardie, “I’ve been known to call my husband psycho grower, because look at my garden, nothing is the normal size here!”

That may be the understatement of the year!  Pay a visit to Scott and Mardie Robb’s garden…and you’ll see why the sign says you’re entering the “Land of the Giants.” Eighteen pound turnips. 85-pound cabbages.  And that’s just the start. Some will become contenders in the Giant Vegetable contest at the Alaska State Fair.

Says Mardie, “Our growth barometer around here is when we know they’re reaching world record sizes when they get bigger than the measurement on my behind!”

In fact, Scott holds five world records, including a 39-pound turnip, a 64-pound cantaloupe, and a 75-pound rutabaga. All have been verified by the folks at Guinness World Records. 

“If you consistently finish on top or you hold several world records, I dare say it’s not luck,” Scott explains. “ It’s work ,it’s practice. It’s manipulating mother nature as much as you possibly can..”

Manipulating mother nature means careful cross-breeding to produce seeds that generate these giants.  Of course, Alaska’s endless summer sunlight also helps, as does the four to six hours a day Scott spends in his garden, fertilizing, cultivating, caressing…and keeping the moose out with an electric fence.

“When things grow that fast, it’s not like watching cement set,” Scott says. You can actually see movement.  That’s the thrill of it for me.”
Today Scott and Mardie are entering a couple of kohlrabi plants.  It’s sort of a cross between a cabbage and a turnip.  Scott had his world record snatched away by another grower a couple of years ago…but this year, he’s feeling good about his Goliaths.

“Something big might happen today,” Scott muses and he and Mardie unload the kohlrabi from their SUV to the contest weighing area.   And he’s right:  Scott’s vegetable tops the scales at 81.65 pounds more than sixteen pounds heavier than the old record.   Family and friends break into applause as Scott recaptures the title and earns yet another mention in Guinness.

Did you know:

Alaska farmers may grow some of the largest fruits and vegetables on Earth, but they’re not alone.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s largest pumpkin was grown in Pennsylvania it weighs in at a whopping 1469 pounds!  

The world’s biggest apple comes from Japan, at over four pounds and an Israeli farmer holds the title for the world’s biggest lemon it weighs in at over eleven pounds.

For More Information:

Alaska State Fair
www.alaskastatefair.org