Home Arts Pavilion — Canned Goods Results, Thursday Morning

Results below are as of 11:20 this morning and the ribbons are already on the jars, so if you want to see yours go look, don't wait on me. We ran three judges this year at one table under the big window — Mrs. Louella Kray of Grinnell (soft spreads), Mrs. Ardith Sonnenberg (pickles & relishes), and Miss Karen Petsch from the extension office, who kept the cards and did the arithmetic and did not let anybody talk her out of a single point.

The demonstration at TWO O'CLOCK is Louella doing a full water-bath run start to finish, headspace, rims, the works, and she will answer anything you ask her. North table. Two o'clock. Bring a chair from the bleachers if the folding ones are gone.

JARS ARE PICKED UP SUNDAY 6:00–8:00 P.M. ONLY.
NOT SATURDAY. NOT BEFORE THE PAVILION CLOSES. Bring your entry tag or a box with your name on it. Anything left after 8:00 goes to the 4-H stand and gets eaten.

HOW THE CARD WORKS, because I get asked this forty times a day. Nobody is judging whether Louella likes your jam. She is filling out a hundred-point card with four columns on it and the columns have fixed weights, and she has to write a number in each one whether she'd eat the jar or not. Flavor is forty points, and that is the biggest column, which is why a strawberry that tastes like strawberry can carry a jar a long way — but it is only forty. Texture & set is twenty-five. A soft spread that weeps a ring of syrup at the edge of the spoon loses in that column and it does not matter one bit that it was the best flavor on the table, because the flavor column is already full up at forty and there is nowhere else for those points to go. That's arithmetic, not opinion.

Before any lid comes off, every jar gets turned in the hand: seal, rim, headspace, ring rust, floating fruit, siphoning down the side. A chip or a smear of jam under the rim is a disqualification straight out, regardless of what's inside it, and we do that first so nobody's hopes get up. And I will say it again in print — PARAFFIN IS NOT ACCEPTED IN ANY CLASS AND HAS NOT BEEN SINCE THE RULES CHANGED. Two jars came in under wax this morning. They come off the table. Come see me and I'll show you the sheet.

Judges taste with a fresh spoon every single time and rinse between entries, which is why judging forty-one jams takes until eleven o'clock and why there is a coffee can of spoons the size of a mailbox behind the head table.

The head table under the north window, jars lined up on a white cloth, spoons in a can — THE HEAD TABLE, ABOUT 9:40 THIS MORNING — SPREADS TO THE LEFT, PICKLES TO THE RIGHT

CLASS 14 — SOFT SPREADS, STRAWBERRY41 entries · Judge: L. Kray

106	BLUE	Dessa Kuhlmann, Marshall Twp. "Full clear color, no bleed to the top. Set holds a cut edge on the spoon and lets go clean. Fruit distributed. Excellent."	96
122	RED	Doris Wieland, New Sharon "Flavor outstanding, brightest on the table. Headspace generous — nearly 5/8. Small syrup ring at edge."	91
137	WHITE	Jeanine Sopko, Wapsie "Slight caramel note, overcooked by perhaps a minute. Set firm to stiff. Clean rim, good pack."	85
118	—	Verna Pilcher, Otley Third judge's card mislaid between the head table and the office. Scored below at the public table.	—

(Doris has taken second in this class four years running and I will not be the one to tell her about her headspace. Louella wrote it down twice. Doris, honey, fill the jar.)

ENTRY NO. 118 — STRAWBERRY PRESERVE — V. PILCHER, OTLEY

The four score columns for this entry came up blank when Karen collated the cards — the third judge's card went astray somewhere between the head table and the office and we are not holding up the whole sheet for it. Miss Petsch has set the jar out with a spoon and the card below so folks passing through can score it themselves. Use the sliders or the arrow keys. The placing line rewrites itself off the same thresholds printed in the KEY. This is the visitors' card, not the official one — Verna's official placing goes up when the card turns up.

APPEARANCE — clarity, rim, headspace, seal /200

COLOR — natural to fruit, no darkening /150

TEXTURE & SET — holds edge, no weep /250

FLAVOR — fruit forward, no scorch, sugar balance /400

TOTAL SCORE, 100 POSSIBLE 0

PLACING: NO PLACING

SCORECARD KEY — 100 POINTS, ALL CANNED GOODS CLASSES

APPEARANCE — jar, seal, rim, headspace, pack, clarity of liquid	20
COLOR — natural to the fruit or vegetable; no darkening, no bleaching	15
TEXTURE & SET — spreads: holds a cut edge, no weep. Pickles: crisp, not hollow, not translucent	25
FLAVOR — characteristic, sugar and acid in balance, no scorch, no off note	40
TOTAL	100

RIBBON THRESHOLDS. 92 and above — BLUE. 84 through 91 — RED. 75 through 83 — WHITE. Below 75 — no placing; the jar still goes on the table with its entry tag.
TIES are broken on the FLAVOR column alone. If flavor ties as well, the higher TEXTURE & SET takes it. We have never gone past that and Karen says if we do she is going to lunch.
DISQUALIFICATION before opening: paraffin seal (any class), chipped or cracked jar, unclean sealing rim, ring rusted through, zinc lid with a bare glass liner, or no entry tag.

CLASS 22 — DILL, WHOLE27 entries · Judge: A. Sonnenberg

191	BLUE	Cheryl Bettendorf, Peoria Ridge "Uniform 3-inch cucumbers, blossom ends trimmed, no floaters, brine clear to the bottom. Crisp through the core. Dill in balance."	94
204	RED	Marge Hovde, Otley "Good brine, good pack. Two cucumbers noticeably larger than the rest. Slight softening at stem end."	88
176	WHITE	Ruth Ann Delzell, Marshall Twp. "Over-processed. Interior translucent, hollow at the core on the cut. Brine cloudy with fine sediment."	78

(On the pack: a whole dill class is half won before the lid comes off. Ardith stands the jar up, looks at it dead-on like a photograph, and if the cucumbers are all different lengths and one is bobbing at the top she has already written a number down. Cut them to the jar, not the jar to them. And an over-processed pickle cannot be hidden — she cuts one crosswise and it is either white and crisp all the way through or it is glassy and empty in the middle, and everybody standing at the rope can see it too.)

CLASS 26 — DILL SPEARS19 entries · Judge: A. Sonnenberg

213	BLUE	Tyler Brummerhop, age 14, Wapsie "Spears stand straight, cut to a uniform length within an eighth. Excellent snap. Brine bright. Best pack in the class."	95
188	RED	Lorene Stufflebeam, New Sharon "Fine flavor, garlic well judged. Spears vary in length, three lie at an angle. Trace siphoning at shoulder."	89
199	WHITE	Bev Ochylski, Otley "Brine slightly clouded. Texture good. Alum flavor detectable at finish."	81

(A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY took the blue in spears over a field that is usually all grandmothers and I have been telling people about it since 10:15. Ardith didn't know whose jar it was — nobody does, the tags are folded and Karen keeps the book — and when she found out she laughed so hard she had to sit down. Tyler, if you read this, come find me, I want to know how you cut them that even.)

CLASS 31 — MISCELLANEOUS FRUIT, WHOLE11 entries · Judge: L. Kray

221	BLUE	Naomi Feickert, Peoria Ridge — SOUR CHERRY, WHOLE "Fruit whole and evenly filled, no shrivel, syrup clear and light. Pit count nil. Very fine."	93
207	ENTERED	GOOSEBERRY, WHOLE — R. Tolliver, Wapsie
216	RED	Elna Kirschbaum, Otley — PLUM, WHOLE "Good color. Several plums split in the pack. Syrup heavier than the class calls for."	86

BEST OF SHOW, CANNED GOODS: ENTRY 106, DESSA KUHLMANN, STRAWBERRY PRESERVE, 96 POINTS. It is on the head table right now under the box fan with the rosette leaned against it, and it will sit there through Sunday. Two of the three judges independently wrote the word "clean" on their cards, which never happens.

Best of Show came down to a tie at 96 with the sour cherry, 221, and it broke on the ~~flavot~~ flavor column — 39 to 37 — exactly the way the rule reads. Naomi took it beautifully and went and got a lemonade.

Odds and ends: seven jars disqualified before opening this morning (two paraffin, three unclean rims, one chip at the shoulder, one no tag). Nine entries in relish move to the afternoon card because we ran out of spoons, results posted by 4:30. If your name is misspelled it is because I typed this in ~~fourty~~ forty minutes and I am sorry — come tell me and I'll fix the book, which is the one that counts.

DEMONSTRATION AT TWO O'CLOCK, NORTH TABLE, LOUELLA KRAY, FULL WATER-BATH RUN. She brings her own jars. It's worth your time even if you've done it forty years, because she measures headspace with a ruler in front of God and everybody and you will change how you fill a jar.

The pavilion from the doorway, tables and folding chairs, people in a slow line — PAVILION, LOOKING NORTH FROM THE MAIN DOOR — CHAIRS FOR THE 2:00 GO OUT AT 1:30

Judges' comments are transcribed verbatim from the official cards. Score totals are final as entered in the book by K. Petsch. Protests in writing to the superintendent before 5:00 p.m. Friday.
Home Arts Pavilion · east of the grandstand, past the sheep barn · JARS PICKED UP SUNDAY 6:00–8:00 P.M. ONLY.
Mimeographed at the fair office. Extra copies at the door and tacked by the rope. — B.O.

JARS SCORED BY THE PUBLIC AT THIS TABLE: 0

Other sheets off this table

HOME ARTS — CANNED GOODS

ENTRY NO. 118 — STRAWBERRY PRESERVE — V. PILCHER, OTLEY

SCORECARD KEY — 100 POINTS, ALL CANNED GOODS CLASSES