What does bees wax candles, a house made out of soy, and a prize winning head of lettuce have in common?

Apparently all together they make for a really good time. I know this because Jessica and I went and saw them all a few weeks ago, at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.

The fair is supposedly the most prominent agricultural event in Canada, which is kind of odd when you think about how out of touch country folk think Toronto is. Yet every November since 1922 there we are, playing host to some 3,000 head of cattle, 1,300 horses, 1,600 birds, 500 sheep, 300 goats, and 300 pigs as well as 300,000 human visitors (making it just 32,556,099 visits less popular than a Youtube video of a couple dancing down the aisle at their wedding).

When I was a kid my parent’s used to take my brother, my sister, and myself there every year but up until the other week it had been over a decade since my last outing to the fair.

So I was excited… and nervous. After all it had been me that suggested we go to this. It had been me who had preached the awesomeness of the event to Jessica (who had never heard of the thing let alone been before). What if it wasn’t really that entertaining? What if I was just easily wowed by the funny tufts of hair atop cows heads when I was a kid? It was possible, after all I am the same child who found nothing more entertaining than watching a spring bounce down a set of stairs.

And that worry… it began to really sink in as we first entered the building.

The thing I seemed not to remember about the fair is it’s less ‘mid-way fair’ and more ‘trade show’. Booths everywhere, mainly targeted at people who own more than the postage stamp of land you’d be lucky to find in Toronto (one of the top five most space rich international cities sure, but not really a great place for cattle to settle down and grow old together).

I wasn’t going to spend thousands of dollars on a riding saddle, no matter how much the sales man assured Jessica and I his mahogany leather was better than any other saddle we’d find. The 124-horsepower of my trusty steed may not come with as fine a leather but it’s built in seating sure looks a lot more comfortable.

Naturally I began to worry, as we wandered through the booths and looked around at the amount of overalls all the other visitors seemed to be wearing, that maybe this wasn’t our event.

But the booth owners didn’t seem to notice our fish out of water gazes. In fact they all seemed to want to talk to us, and by us I mean Jessica. They must have sensed her small town upbringing… this is where Jessica would be loath to remind me yet again that she’s actually from a city, not a small town.

Sorry Jess, I’ve spent time in your downtown, I am not buying it.

We talked to wine makers, to nutritionists who seemed to think we were elementary school teachers, and  to a man who wouldn’t rest until we were aware of all the things that could be made from pollen. And you know, it started to get fun.

It didn’t hurt that Jessica is a free sample ninja, able to nod along to any sales pitch before convincing the pitchman to crack open a block of goat cheese and some crackers and letting us feast away.

The winner of ironic booth set up of the night? Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada side by side with the McDonalds (fast food McDonald, not old farmer McDonald of childrens song lore)  booth… pitching their Ontario grown apple slices naturally.

Soon we discovered that just beyond the borders of booth village lay the true appeal for us city folk. There were shows of all sorts, such as a dog show (which we missed) and a horse show (an extra $20? No thanks). We did catch the free preview of the horse show, which led me to believe that those willing to spend forty bucks a head on their Fair admissions probably were pretty entertained.

We gazed at the horses (Jessica actually met an old neighbour who was showing her horse at the fair and let us sneak into the pen with her… big city Jess?), enjoyed the sights and sounds of a cow auction, and smiled at the antics of the sheep, llama’s, and pigs alike. Why I even got a chance to crack a few swine flu jokes to the appropriate groans of Jessica.

We marveled at the giant prize winning vegetables and walked through a house that was made entirely from soy, as well as all the objects within it. I can’t prove this but I believe quite strongly that the soy house was evilly built by a witch to catch vegan Hansel and Gretel.

We ate candy apples and looked on in embarrassment at our own species as men made fools of themselves trying to get a prize winning goat to pose for the camera.

But through it all I had raved about memories of sculptures carved out of pure butter that Jessica, understandably, listened to skeptically. I promised her they existed, I assured her I wasn’t crazy… but as the night came to a close and no sign of any Venus de Becel it wasn’t looking good for me.

And there it was, right when we were starting to leave, two men locked away in a large freezer turning breads best friend into statues.

It’s an amazing talent, if a bit of an odd one. I don’t know who was the first person who looked at a stick of butter and thought, ‘finally, this shall be my canvass!’ I am led to believe it’s an ancient Tibetan Buddhist tradition which really must make it hard for Tibetan parents to tell their kids not to play with their food.

I am sure a common squabble heard in Tibetan households begins with, “It’s your fault he dropped out of law school to be an artists! Did you have to serve so much damn butter with the dinner rolls while he was growing up?!”

Eventually in 1876 butter sculpting made it’s North American at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, which came as no surprise to anyone, for as we all know Philly in the late 1800s was a real hot bed for Buddhism.

Thing’s didn’t take off in the butter art world north of the border until the 1940s when the Dairy Producers of Canada thought they were the perfect marketing tool to strike back against diminishing sales to margarine. The thinking was people would go, “look at that life like representation of King George! We should get some of that to put on our potatoes!”

Since the ’40s butter art has exploded in popularity! Okay not really, but it might, once Hollywood finishes producing this script.

So there, told you I wasn’t crazy… Oh wait, how long did I just spend writing about butter?

Anyway… having tasted country life and soaked in the culture we left feeling as though we had learnt a little of the life outside our concrete jungle.

We drove back across the city to a restaurant in the Beaches, the very nice Beach Bird (which followed the age old rule that every successful shop in the neighbourhood must have the word ‘Beach’ in it) to enjoy some of our livestock friends on a bun while trying to figure out… just what drives a person to wear overalls anyway?