Minnesota State Fair 2025, Part 1

After a year's absence in 2024 due to chemo, I managed to get to the Minnesota State Fair on Tuesday, accompanied by Daughter Number Three-Point-One. 

My interests have gotten very focused over the years: crop art and the Horticulture Building generally, Creative Arts and Education buildings, art show, Eco Experience, and a few food things. Plus people/shirt-watching, and State Fair infrastructure snooping. No beer, no animals, no machines, no free music, even. Who has the time?

The weather was the best it's ever been, and that's been true all week. Highs at most in the mid-70s, and only a few tiny patches of rain, if any. We walked from my house, past the Evie (shared electric car) parking, the north bike parking lot, and the huge bus drop-off lot. 

That brings you to the area where they've erected the historic street car arch:

Today I'll post my miscellaneous photos and the few photos I took in the art show, and tomorrow I'll do a long post of photos from the crop art exhibit.

As always, be on the lookout for faces in things:

After a leisurely walk across the grounds to the Horticulture Building, which opens at 9:00 a.m., we got in line outside for the crop art. After we saw that, we checked out the scarecrows. This one was dedicated to educating people about jumping worms:

We make a run through the Creative Arts and Education buildings. A few favorites were this hooked rug, a surprised grandma pin cushion, and a 1st-grader's colorful, quizzical birds:

We also took the annual issue surveys at the Minnesota House and Senate booths. Make sure you stop by along the back wall in the Education Building, if you've never done it before!

I also saw this button when I was in that part of the building: 

We saw a lot of different things in the Eco Experience building (ebikes, water quality info, bean varieties), but the things I took photos of were these two tree remnants. 

I don't think I've seen such a startling example of root girdling before. You can still see the effects of the pot the young tree was in before it was planted in the ground. Roots need to be loosened or even cut to get them to leave that tight ball and stretch out:

This wedge is a 2004 remnant of a Saint Paul ash tree, cut down after it died from the invasive emerald ash borer insect. The labels indicate various years in the tree's life and our history. The tree dated back to Saint Paul's founding in 1854. Without the effect of the ash borer, the tree could have lived up to another hundred years:

Back on the streets, a classic Fair view:

We had a few small food items along the way, but the only thing worth mentioning is the fawaffle from Baba's, which is near the north end of the Fairgrounds, at Underwood and Randall:

I took a really bad photo after we had eaten most of it, so I don't want to undersell it…and the photos available online are a bit unrealistic, as food photos usually are. 

It's a good-size quartered waffle made from very moist falafel batter. They top it with hummus, drizzle a couple of Middle Eastern sauces on it, and then put a mound of butter in the middle, plus a nice number of halved grape tomatoes and some mint leaves. 

It's one of the best Fair foods I've ever had for sharing, and it's priced very well for the size of it (especially compared to the other ones we purchased earlier). And they delivered it extremely quickly!

Art Show

The art show was very crowded and we were getting tired and hungry, so we didn't give it the time we usually would have. I only took a few photos.

This is Bug Collector by Jessica Turtle, acrylic on paper. I liked the odd proportions and the details, and the fact that she messed with my assumptions about what medium it is (I had assumed it was gouache):

Jammin' by Laurie Rossin. It's not obvious until you zoom in on this photo, and maybe still not obvious even then, but this is a collage made from jigsaw puzzle pieces. It made me want to donate all my previously completed puzzles to her:

 

Erik Jon Olson quilted plastic waste to create Not So Green as You May Think:

I didn't even see the large numbers in the composition until I was looking at the photos to write this post:

Of course there were a lot of nice paintings, drawings, and sculptures, too. But too many people in the way, and not enough time.

Tomorrow, the crop art, which we saw when we were fresh.