The Carolina Classic Fair is now in full swing in Winston-Salem, with carnival rides spinning, music blaring and the smell of fried dough wafting through the air.
But away from the midway, there’s a quieter kind of excitement. Hundreds of locals will spend this week flocking to the event center to see whether the hobby projects they’ve entered have earned blue ribbons.
Over 20,000 entries were submitted this year, in categories ranging from photography to chocolate chip cookies. For this edition of Carolina Curious, WFDD reporter (and, full disclosure, fair participant) April Laissle went behind the scenes of two popular competitions to find out how judges decide who takes home the blue ribbons.
Culinary
Inside the event center, Kimberly Cruz stands next to a long folding table stacked with ziplocked baked goods. She’s one of eight judges who will spend upwards of 11 hours tasting 650 baked goods — everything from cheddar biscuits to lemon bars.
“I prepped. I had made sure I had a good meal on my stomach for all the different flavors that were getting ready to assault my senses,” she says, laughing.
She says that in order to avoid getting sick, most of the judges spit out whatever they’ve tried once they’ve taken a bite. But that single taste is usually enough to determine who gets the blue ribbon — the showstoppers are immediately clear.
“The oatmeal cookies. I got goosebumps thinking about it,” she says. “When I took a bite out of it, it just it melted, and the flavors just came through, and I'm like, ‘You've got to be kidding me.’ It was that amazing.”
Judges evaluate each entry based on appearance, texture, and flavor, awarding first, second and third place ribbons. The best of the best of each section (like cookies or cakes) are awarded a purple ribbon — that’s Judges' Choice.
Junior Crafts
Down the hall, Junior Crafts Department Director Terah Skidmore says the judges have a different kind of challenge:
“What they really took into consideration was, do they think the kid made it? How much help do they think that the parents gave them, and how much of it was really done by the kid?
That can be hard to figure out, given how varied all the entries are. A handful of judges selected by Skidmore spend about seven hours judging more than 1,000 entries, from decorated stuffed socks to recycling art.
That variety is one of the best parts of the competition, she says. She points out an entry that won a Judge’s Choice Award — a metal sculpture titled “Potty Poppins.”
“It was very creative,” she says. “You know, they took a cookie-cutter for the mouth, obviously, a bedpan, SOS pads for the hair.”
She says there’s nothing better than watching the kids arrive to see whether they’ve won.
“When the kids come, either on Kids Day or they come with their parents, that's what they want to do,” she says. “They want to go and they want to find theirs, and they want to see what place they made. And so they'll get so excited when they come in and they say, ‘Oh, I got third place, or I got first place! Oh, Mom, I got Judges' Choice!”
Both Skidmore and Cruz took off work in order to help out at the fair this week. That’s the case for most of the judges here. For Cruz, the job allows her to share the wonder she felt as a child, when even a third-place ribbon for school art felt magical.
“I'm like, that five-year-old kid again, I didn't care what color that ribbon was, that it was just so shiny and pretty,” she says. “I’m a kid at heart. I will always love the fair.”
You can see this year’s ribbon winners at The Carolina Classic Fair through October 12.