Kaitlyn Hughes | features editor
Lillie Hooker was walking in the woods one day when she got the urge to carve a stick.
This led her down the path of cultivating a hobby of whittling spoons.
Breaking the habit of doom scrolling on her phone, the activity gives Hooker something to do with her hands while making her feel accomplished.
She came to the Pittsburgh County Fair to start a conversation around her new-found passion.
“I wanted to build up the community in Pittsburgh around carving,” Hooker said.
Opening a discussion to niche activities such as this is the reason the fair was started in 2023 by Justin Lubecki, founder of Ferment Pittsburgh.
To create an eclectic list of vendors, Lubecki sends out an invitation. All recipients of the invite are able to pitch what activities they want to see at the fair. This encourages people to bring their concealed passions to the table creating the distinct County Fair environment.
“I think what’s really cool about creating those invitations is that you can help elevate somebody that’s hiding [their talents],” Lubecki said.
The agricultural event occurred at Allegheny Commons Park on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
In its second year of bringing the community together to celebrate agriculture and craft, the fair hosted a crowd of people gathered around tents with live music and the smell of homemade food wafting through the air.
From an at-home garden to local farms, vendors of all kinds displayed their animals, handmade jewelry, fermented food, hand-picked flowers and more.
Filled with events catering to the young and old, it was a hands-on day of agriculture with the opportunity to ride horses and feed goats and pigs.
The fair presented friendly competition with a grape-stomping contest, apple pie bake-off and a “Best Tomato in Pittsburgh Contest.”
Attendees were able to learn how to bring farming into their own life with demonstrations on how to make worm compost, sesame oil, natural paper, brooms and spoons.
Ross Farms was there to exhibit how to properly shear a sheep with care and show off the materials they make from wool.
The goal of the fair, for this particular group, was to debunk misconceptions around agricultural life, Riley Carter, a farmer at Ross, said.
They constantly receive questions about how their livestock is treated and what kind of life the animals live.
“I feel like a lot of people see on social media a lot of the factory farm they live in these little cages or inside,” Carter said.
“That’s the perception they have, that all these animals live in these horrible conditions.”
This is not the case at Ross Farms.
The business model used by the farm is two-prong. They raise their sheep for wool and meat.
Nothing is wasted.
All the sheep are born on the farm in the spring. Once they reach a year old, their wool gets sheared by Melinda Wamsley from Boss Mare Shearing. The material is then sent off to the mill where it gets spun into yarn, creating hats, socks and blankets.
This is a sustainable process because of the use of natural fibers versus synthetics.
“We just want people to know that you can still support agriculture in different ways,” Carter said. “We’re not supporting horrible living conditions or treatment.”
Shannon McHenry brought her 6-year-old daughter, Grayson McHenry to the fair to show her the importance of homegrown food.
“I think it helps to show everyone where food comes from,” she said.
Conner Plunkett came to the fair to support vendors who he met after attending the Bloomfield Farmers Market multiple times.
He was delighted to get the chance to purchase uncommon goods such as paw paw soda, local fermented miso and indigo dyed t-shirts.
“It’s half a social event, and it’s also an opportunity to get really unique products,” Plunkett said. “Between the access to unique, special products and the larger community, it’s really fun to get out here.”
Having the opportunity to purchase homegrown goods that are not in a normal grocery store makes Pittsburgh a nicer place to live, Plunkett said.
Lubecki said that agriculture’s relationship with a city is exceedingly different from its relationship with suburban and rural areas.
This is why he started a city county fair rather than one in the country.
“Their perspective is different versus the perspective of the people here,” Lubecki said, “where you can have city kids that have never seen a horse in person.”
After studying and doing work with fermentation, he wanted to spread this knowledge with the greater community.
Lubecki said he wants to inform people in hopes of creating a better future.
“This one-day event is just hoping to be inspirational,” Lubecki said. “Inspiration that will continue its unpredictable ripple outward.”