Like so many other big events coming up this summer, the Western Idaho Fair has been cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns.
The night before the fair was cancelled, Georgia White was picking cherries.
“You have to really plan ahead for the fair and if you want to make a delicious cherry pie, you have to go pick the cherries yourself and everything," said White.
White is a self-proclaimed “fair freak.” She takes two weeks off from work every summer to prepare for fair competitions. But winning blue ribbons is a year-round job.
She plants flowers and creates recipes months in advance. She grows huge eggplants, even though she doesn’t eat them.
But this year, although she has jams set aside just for the fair and a brownie recipe perfected, there won’t be any competitions. But that’s not what she will miss the most.
“I'll miss going and I'll miss seeing my people, you know, like fair friends," said White. "That's really the only time of year we see each other is at the fair.”
She also said she will miss the annual tradition. And she's afraid her fellow competitors might lose interest after missing a year and never come back.
In the meantime, she is eating her canned peaches, making her tomatoes into sauces and giving her eggplants to anyone who will take them.
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