San Diego is a weird place

[Dinner]

agricultural show? What the hell? How do they have that in San Diego?

It's a big county and agriculture is still huge business. True, since WW2 the number of acres devoted to agriculture has continually declined but the value per acre has gone up by leaps and bounds. The county is easily one of the top ten in terms of value of agricultural production in the country and often in the top 5. The main categories produced are 1) ornamental plants & cut flowers (as Slow said the weather is close to ideal year round so lots of nurseries are here so if you buy a potted plant or flowers for your mom or girlfriend then there is a good chance they came from here) 2) Seafood & aquaculture (tuna, sea bass, halibut, rockfish, lobster, sardines, & shell fish [mostly oysters & abalone but also clams] are the big ticket items. Sea urchin and harvesting kelp & sea weed are other big surprise industries) 3) Cattle. The west was built on the cattle business and it's still huge with local ranches like Mendenhall Ranch specializing in top dollar grass fed, organic, free range beef. It's a huge business but there are also smaller dairy and cheese ranches. 4) Eggs and poultry. East County is vast and empty but close to the big markets of Southern California so if you buy eggs in SoCall there is a 50-50 chance it came from here 5) Sheep & goats. The deserts east of the mountains are too dry to support cattle but they're huge, land is dirt cheap, and things like goats and sheep can live out there so there are a bunch of desert ranches specializing in goat or sheep meat, hides, milk, & cheese.

[Dinner]

I recall about a year ago the local paper did a special on a local artisan cheese maker who came to the area as a refugee from Iraq. Apparently he had studied cheese making in France in the 70's and moved here after the first gulf war, he originally worked in construction because that's the only field he could find work and moved to east county because you could buy acres of land for virtually nothing, eventually he opened a camel and goat dairy to sell to the large mid east population in El Cajun. Strange but true fact east county San Diego has the second largest mid-east population in the country after Detroit (though they're mostly Chaldeans/Assyrians or Arab Christians) so he sold his mideast style cheeses & milks to local ethnic markets which was a niche over looked by the large American dairies, he's now expanding his business into European style cheeses and sells to companies like Whole Foods). After 2003 almost two dozen members of his extended family left Iraq as refugees and he was forced to help support them all but now the free labor is helping his dairy business grow by leaps and bounds. It's kind of a cool American success story.

[Cort Haus]

I'm sure Oerdin used to write in paragraphs.

[Dinner]

That's so passe. like using correct grammar.

[SlowwHand]

long live ee cummings

[Egbert]

I'm sure Oerdin used to write in paragraphs.

I wish Oerdin would write in paragraphs.

Walls of text
paragraphs

[Dinner]

Here's a nice little slide show of some of the deserts on sale at the fair. Not surprisingly it's a tour de force of all things deep fried though some of my personal favorites include the maple-bacon doughnut, the deep fried Baby Ruth stuffed Jalapeno, and the fried Klondike bar. I never did get a chance to try the deep fried koolaid.

http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/06/fair-food-deep-fried-sweets-at-the-san-diego-fair-deep-fried-kool-aid-deep-fried-klondike-bar-slideshow.html#show-168954