Young students gain rewards from Fair experience

Every year the Valley Blue Jeans Garden Club distributes vegetable and flower seeds to the kindergarten, first, second and third graders of South Bend, Raymond and Willapa Valley schools. These seeds are to be planted and entered into the Pacific County Fair. This year we had great success in the flower and vegetable entries. The Fair awards the students ribbons for their entries. The Valley Blue Jeans Garden Club awards money to the students with the best entry. Last year, at the 2013 Fair, a student received a $10 award in this category.

This year, because we had an outstanding amount of entries, we were able to reward more than one student.

In the flower building, Caton Swagger, for second place, received a Blue Ribbon and $5 for her Zinnia flower entry. First place went to, Ryan and Wil Clements, who entered as a team. They entered a planter full of flowers and received a Blue and Special In Class Ribbon and $10. Their mother gave them the planter and told them to put dirt in it and plant their flower seeds. So they did put the dirt in as instructed and emptied all their flower packets in it. The result was astounding. New flowers opened every day to make a new showing every day of the fair.

In the vegetable building, Ryker Ekman, for second place received a Blue and a Purple ribbon and $5 for his garden planting. His planting was corn, beans and peas, all planted together as a garden. The corn plants had ears of corn forming and the beans had beans on the plants. The peas were blooming nicely and he was asked, "Where are the peas?" Ryan's comment, "I ate them because I like peas."

Samantha Sheary received a Blue, Purple and Reserve Grand Champion Ribbon and $10. Reserve Grand Champion Ribbon was for the second best entry over all of the entries in the vegetable building). Samantha's entry was an Eight Ball zucchini squash. She entered it with a leaf still attached and a curly cue on the stem. Absolutely no blemishes on it. Beautiful entry!