82-Umcaster Fanning, Saturday, July 27,1985
Kitty lackey is ready
for fair season
BY BARBARA RADER
Staff Correspondent
RENFREW July is one of the
busiest months in the farmer’s
calendar. The men are busily
baling the last load of hay or straw
in anticipation of an evening at the
county fair with their families.
And the women are hard at work
in the kitchen, canning their best
fruits and vegetables and baking
goodies from time-honored recipes
in anticipation of shiny blue rib
bons.
For Kitty Rose Zackey of
Lebanon, fair season is a fast
paced and exciting time. Each
summer Kitty leaves her home in
Lebanon and travels to Renfrew,
where she stays with her mother.
And during the months she spends
here, Kitty will be busy until the
last fair entry tag is propery at
tached and every item is entered in
the right class, awaiting the
judges’ attentions.
This young mother of two
daughters Alexis, 2Vfe, and
Diana, 1, has been going to the
fair almost all her life, and this
year is no exception. She is cer
tified to teach French and E) ih.
Kitty prepares her grandmother’s old fashioned ginger
cookies to enter in the Butler County Fair. She makes this
cookie every year and has varying success at the fairs.
Kitty and her family display some of the quilts Kitty has made. From left are Kitty with
daughters Diana and Alexis, and her husband, Leslie.
but hasn’t taught lately because
she’s busy raising her daughters.
Now that fair season has
arrived, Kitty spends much of her
time preparing her entries for the
Butler County Fair, held this week,
and for the Butler Farm Show,
which opens Aug. 4. Later in the
season she will enter items in the
Lawrence County Fair.
Although she has reduced the
number of entries since her
children were born, she still finds
time to enter quite a few
homemade items.
This year she’s entered one quilt,
and numerous jars of fruits,
vegetables, pickles, jams and
jellies. Fresh vegetables, fruits,
flowers and her favorite recipes of
homemade fudge and baked goods
are also out on top.
She makes her baked entries
from family recipes she learned to
prepare at an early age. An old
fashioned ginger cookie made
from her grandmother’s favorite
recipe is one of her favorite en
tries.
“Sometimes they win and
sometimes not; it depends on the
ndge and the humidity,” she
/'
Kitty is one step ahead of the other exhibitors as she ties her entry tags on all the
canned goods she will enter in the Butler County Fair.
notes. lf l really make the cookie
only about twice a year,” she
confessed. “Once at Christmas and
the other for the fair.”
Nuts and raisins are the only
decorations on the ginger cookies,
“since that’s how I remember my
grandmother doing it,” she adds.
She says she doesn’t make the
cookie often because it is so time
consuming, but she does make
plenty of other varieties
throughout the year.
Kitty also has her own red
raspberry patches, blueberry
bushes and grapes, which keep her
busy making jars of jellies and
jams that always top the canned
goods competition at the fair.
Three acres are devoted to her
two sets of fruit orchards. One is a
young set of trees just getting
started, but the other two acres are
planted into a prosperous garden.
The garden and dwelling are
surrounded by flowers and her
mother keeps bees.
Kitty’s mother collects the honey
using both modern and old
fashioned techniques and entered
the honey in the fair for the first
time last year.
Kitty makes a special fruit pie
using cherries, apples, peaches
and pears from their orchard, but
because the pie is displayed at the
fair and doesn’t get eaten, she
considers it a waste to enter it. '
Kitty names several reasons for
putting so much effort into her fair
entries. “I love the fair,” she says.
“The whole idea of anybody en
tering free, showing their han
diwork, the fruits of their gardens,
their animals, their crops. People
are so excited to see a ribbon on
their carefully prepared work. And
the prize money adds up too,” she
adds.
“It gives a terrific feeling of
satisfaction to be rewarded for
n
Kitty's little helper, daughter Lexi, helps her cut out the
ginger cookies. There’s no better way for her to learn to make
prize-winning cookies than from her mom!
something we do anyway, like
canning vegetables or picking
flowers,” she continues. “It makes
me feel like the gardening and
pickling and sewing are being
recognized as worthwhile ac
tivities.”
Kitty often reaps rewards in the
form of ribbons and prize money
for her entries. She wins most often
with her raspberry jam and jelly,
bread and butter pickles and
quilts.
Since moving to the Lebanon
area, Kitty has entered a quilt for
the past four years in the Penn
sylvania Farm Show, taking a
first, two seconds and a third
place.
A Rosey Wedding quilt she made
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for her brother took first place in
the 1983 Farm Show.
This year, she received a second
place on a blue quilt she designed,
combining the log cabin and stars.
The quilt was later accepted at a
National Quilt Show held in April
at Paducah, Kty., and then was
photographed for a “Quilt Art 1987
Calendar” to be published
nationwide.
Kitty’s older sister led the way
for Kitty to start quilting eleven
years ago. After reading many
books and making some quilts she
describes as “really ugly,” Kitty
got better at her craft. She now
uses some of her quilts, but gives
most of them away as gifts. She
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