Annual Burlington Farm Fair gives organizers chance to show off ag industry

Chef Amanda Rodriquez of Cherry Hill, with daughter Ariana, prepares samples of corn salsa she made during a demonstration at the Burlington County Fair. (Photo by Richard Skelly)

COLUMBUS — The annual Burlington County Farm Fair is typically held the second and third week in July at the spacious Burlington County Fairgrounds off Rt. 206 in Columbus, near Jacksonville.
This year the fair’s Home Arts tent featured a wide array of activities with vegetables.
Nationally, Burlington County is the No. 3 producer for cranberries, and in the state, it is No. 2 in hogs and pigs and No. 2 in fruits and berries.
The county has 235 horse farms more than 29,000 acres and there are about 680 farms devoted to other endeavors.
The last USDA farm census indicates there are 96,000 acres in Burlington devoted to farming.
“This year our Farm Fair is bigger and better than ever. We have a lot more entries this year,” said Wendy Stiles, who is involved with the culinary division of the fair’s home arts tent. “We do have a lot of farmers here in the county and a lot of people who are raising livestock here, in small and big operations.
“This year we had a contest called ‘Anything Zucchini,’ so we had zucchini bread, zucchini fritters, zucchini cakes some really awesome things you wouldn’t even think had zucchini in it,” she said. Here in the home arts tent, visitors could find award winning goods prepared by farmers and backyard vegetable and fruit growers, things like green tomato relish, pickled beef steak tomatoes, a variety of jams and jellies and blueberry, strawberry and raspberry-based creations. There were also Asian pear and European pear butters, pizza sauces and other products, “as long as you can put it in a jar, you can enter it.”
Chef Amanda Rodriquez of Cherry Hill delivered a demonstration on how to make corn salsa recently at the annual Burlington County Farm Fair.
Rodriquez teaches classes in homemade condiments and how to make value-added goods like corn and tomato salsa at the Burlington County Ag Center on Centerton Road in Moorestown. She can be found there teaching classes many Saturday mornings.
Accompanied by her daughter, Ariana, Rodriquez demonstrated how to make corn salsa in one of a series of “Front Porch Demonstrations” held in front of the Home Arts Tent at the fair. Ingredients for her recipe included two ears of corn, one cup cherry tomatoes, garlic, lemon, cilantro, scallion and jalapeno pepper.
While making the salsa, she told the small crowd at her booth, aioli is a kind of flavored mayonnaise made with two eggs, a bit of mustard and lemon juice, “and you all don’t have to buy your condiments, you can make them yourselves. I do a condiment class at the Ag Center. It’s so much better when you make them yourself. I have classes in making your own condiments booked through next year.”
She recommended getting a small kitchen processor and noted the larger ones are more expensive.
Rodriquez added she gets most ingredients for all the condiments and salsa and value-added goods she prepares from her own extensive garden and some nearby farmers, as she and her husband have five children.
Canned goods stayed out on the tables while baked goods had to be removed after a day, Stiles said, so photos of the award-winning baked creations were posted on a large bulletin board in the tent.
Judging for baked goods is done on Monday night, typically the opening night of the Burlington County Farm Fair.
“The grand champion for best of the show was this sourdough bread here, which all the judges agreed was amazing this year,” Stiles explained.
After the brief tour, Stiles concluded, “we’ve learned over the years, farm people can do a lot of things, because they’re not like regular people, they don’t watch much TV, they don’t play with their phones all day and sometimes they don’t get as much sleep as everybody else, so their adrenaline is always pumped up.”