I’ve stumbled onto the secret of winning at the Stanislaus County Fair: Submit the only exhibit in your category.
No joke. It totally works.
This is easier said than done for many exhibit categories. If your thing is rabbits, for instance, you’ve got some pretty tough competition from all the other 4-H kids out there. Same for chickens and sheep, it appears, though I’m no expert, just a guy who wanders up and down the aisles of cages and pens most summers.
Seems like photography could be a tough one to break into the winner’s circle, judging from the many walls of photos in building E-1 at the fairgrounds in Turlock. And flowers, and squash, and maybe peaches.
The lists of categories for animals and arts and crafts seems endless, and if you like looking at these things – labors of love carefully handmade or grown by thousands of your neighbors all over Stanislaus County – it could take a few hours. Most checker-outers can move through the exhibit buildings and grounds in an hour or so if they don’t dilly dally, until the lure of deep-fried twinkies overpowers them.
Yes, I said thousands – 23,639 exhibits this year, to be exact, up 4,000 over last year’s fair. That’s a lot.
They include 1,453 livestock market animals reared and presented by 4-H and FFA youth and Grange young adults, among a total of 2,807 exhibitors.
Including one wood turner, this year anyway:
Me.
Is wood turning a dying art in Stanislaus County?
In my junior high school a few years (well, decades) ago, all the boys and many girls took woodshop and most made a dowel or two on a 1,200-pound lathe, a machine that holds and quickly spins wood while you shape it into something useful.
Probably because they’re so large and heavy and making stuff can be dirty, few people have lathes these days.
I didn’t seek mine. But when the grandfather of my daughter-in-law – Dennis Remington – died a few years ago, his widow needed it out of their basement. None of their family wanted it and the lathe ended up in my garage.
It took a long time and much trial and error to transform logs into anything worthwhile, believe me.
But eventually someone said, “Hey you should enter that in the county fair.”
And I thought, “Why not?”
So two years ago, I Googled it and found the online entry procedure fairly simple. I paid my $2 entry fee for each of the two items allowed in my category – adult crafts/wood working/wood turning. I drove them down to Turlock at the appointed time and waited.
No one called or sent a text or email to let me know if the judges liked my pieces. It turns out they don’t do that.
At least that’s what 14-year-old Olivia Wieser confirmed when I chatted up her family on Saturday. She’s nearly a pro at this, having entered rabbits and photography and rockets she built over the years as a 4-H kid in Turlock.
“You’re just excited to see if you won anything,” Olivia said, her eyes glowing. And she did – first place for snapping a beautiful pink flower while visiting cousins in Alaska, three seconds for other pics and one third this year.
Many of her blue and other-hued ribbons over the years were produced using her grandmother’s fancy camera, though some came from her cell phone. “I see something, and if turns out good, you go, ‘Oh, that could win at the fair!’” she said.
Olivia is no longer in 4-H, but the thrill of competition and the prospect of triumph brought her back for the first time this year as an unaffiliated entrant.
Apparently it’s contagious. Her mother, Melissa, is a first-timer this year, winning two second places and a third for her own photos.
‘Just get your stuff out there.‘
“I tried!” Melissa said. “It’s all about what people want to see. Just get your stuff out there.”
I reckon most exhibitors would say something similar. Creating something – anything – is rewarding. Fulfilling. Sometimes therapeutic.
To take a dark mass from the firewood pile and make it into something that family or friends might use to hold car keys or fruit, or just to sit there on the table because of its beauty – that’s a great feeling.
Pastors and therapists redeem humans. I redeem sticks and logs.
I was lucky that James Orr of Oakdale took me under his wing when I was first starting out, patiently sharing invaluable tips and techniques. I know that others with lathes are making and even selling their works of art, so I was anxious to compare my pieces with others at my first fair in 2024.
I drove to Turlock and approached the exhibit hall, my heart pounding. And there next to my bowls were a blue and a red ribbon – first and second place.
And exactly zero other wood bowls.
Is it a victory if you’re the only one in a race?
Labor of love
Imagine the exhilaration when a $13 check appeared in our mailbox a few weeks later with prize money I didn’t even know I was vying for. Thirteen bucks!
The standard IRS mileage reimbursement rates suggests it costs me about $30 to drive to Turlock and back times three (dropping off bowls, attending county fair, retrieving them after) = $90, not counting parking and $15 to get in and $18 for a Korean corndog, plus $4 exhibit entry fee … you get the point.
On Saturday, same thing; each year you can enter something you made in the previous 12 months. In 2025, a guy whose name I didn’t make note of submitted beautiful bowls that I studied intently, turning them over and over in my hands to see how he did this and that (I won that year, too).
I hope he’ll consider taking another run at it next year. And I hope James and other wood turners will as well.
And that maybe, as you’re reading this, you’ve said to yourself, “You know, people say my quilts are pretty good, or my jam or homebrewed beer is tasty, or my Lego creation is eye-catching. Could I actually win something?”
You can!
Win or lose, you’ve created something that the world otherwise would never know. That’s reason enough to try.
Just don’t do it for the money.
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact him at garth@themodestofocus.org.