Patricia Head keeps winning blue ribbons
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on September 25, 2005 2:04 AM
By BECKY BARCLAY
News-Argus Lifestyle Editor
Patricia Head of Nahunta has so many blue ribbons from the county fair that she plans to make a quilt out of them.
The 69-year-old has been entering items in the county fair for about 30 years. Her late mother got her interested in the competition.
"Momma loved to enter stuff into the fair," Mrs. Head said. "She'd work her fingers to the bone to get stuff ready to enter.
"My goal was to beat her one year with my fruitcake," Mrs. Head said. "She always got the blue ribbon. I always got the red. I won the blue ribbon last year."
Mrs. Head enters several categories at the fair, but is "the person to beat" in the food conservation contest. She goes home with first- and second-place ribbons every year. Last year, she won a Best of Show award for her hot peppers.
"That was a shocker," she said. "It floored me. I had always worked for the blue ribbon, but never expected a Best of Show."
Mrs. Head enters the food conservation contest for the challenge. "I look forward to it," she said.
She begins canning the summer's bounty as soon as it's ready in her garden. She cans whatever the garden produces each year.
Sometimes friends give her foods, which she also cans.
"Last weekend, a lady brought me some pears, and I'd never canned pears before," she said. "It's not my favorite thing to can, but they were so pretty that I went ahead and canned them to enter into the fair this year."
Her favorite thing to can is butterbeans. She said they are the hardest vegetable to pick, but the easiest to shell.
Mrs. Head got a friend hooked on the food conservation contest last year, and she's going to enter her canned cabbage this year. "She's already told me 'don't you leave me; I want to go when you go,'" she said.
How does she feel about being the queen of the food conservation competition?
"There's competition out there everywhere you turn," she said. "You better believe it. Once the people get into it, if they like to can, they are hooked."
Mrs. Head said as long as she's able to can her fruits and vegetables and enter them into the county fair, she will.