In the dead of winter, when snow is falling and smoke is rising from chimneys, it may seem as if the Island is frozen, still and silent. But tucked away in workshops, basements, and craft rooms, there are steady sounds and movement: fingers turn the pages of cookbooks and seed catalogs. Knitting needles click, saws buzz, sewing machines hum, and scissors snip. The Island’s industrious makers and artists are hard at work, preparing their entries for the annual Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair. They are dreaming of blue ribbons, fluttering and twirling in the warm August breeze.
The work is all in pursuit of a chance at glory. Susanne Cronin, now the Ag Fair’s hall manager, remembers the feeling. Many years ago, before she held this position, she entered an award-winning flower arrangement.
“When I got my first blue ribbon, I was literally crying,” she recounted. “I said, ‘This is better than a pair of diamond earrings.’”
Why did it mean so much to her? Because “it came from the fair,” she said. “It was judged; it was valued.”
Everything that happens in the Ag Fair’s exhibition hall is serious business. The entries – from home-churned butter to model ships, towering sunflowers to tomatoes, paintings, quilts, and jewelry – are judged with a sense of utmost responsibility. (The barn, where the animals are housed, is its own universe, with a separate stable of judges and a separate manager – Julie Scott of Slough Farm in Edgartown.) The rules for hall entry are plentiful and disqualifications are common. Make sure your piece is the right size, Cronin advised, and never use any feathers – they aren’t allowed.
An Ag Fair judge position itself is revered. Some of the judges are serving near-lifetime appointments – some have been at it for forty or fifty years. Many of them possess decades of professional or passionate amateur experience in their specific category, and their anonymity is carefully guarded. However, Cronin, a former judge, agreed to reveal the secrets of the job.
Cronin began volunteering for the Agricultural Society in 1987. “Anything that they asked me to do, I would do, because I love the fair so much,” she said. This loyalty took Cronin, a summer resident, from hopeful entrant to volunteer to adult art judge. She was able to draw on her degree in family and consumer science and her experience teaching fashion at the college level in New York state, where she lives in the winter. Now she manages the “department heads,” who each manage their own category-specific judges.
A few days before the fair, when the Island is at its peak of activity, entrants arrive at the Ag Hall in West Tisbury to drop off their items. Staff sets everything up inside. Then the judges arrive. For the adult art category, the submissions are broken down into further sub-categories.
“There’s professional and nonprofessional,” Cronin explained. “And then we have eight different categories, so we have oil, pastel, miscellaneous drawing, collage,” and others. Color, composition, and depth are all taken into consideration. The judges will speak up for pieces they think should be awarded first, second, third, or honorable mention. Cronin hears both sides: she asks who is in favor of awarding a piece a certain ribbon and who is against it. She takes a step back, reviews the piece again. They discuss.
Sometimes, the judges reach an impasse. In those cases, Cronin will break the tie. However, sometimes the feelings are just too strong. “If it’s really, really important to them, both sides of it, what we’ll do is we will award two blue ribbons,” she said.
Elsewhere in the hall, the same rigor is applied to other categories. For baked goods, some of the criteria are “size, texture, appearance, taste,” she said. “Everything is tasted. A lot of people don’t believe that everything is tasted, but it really is. Everything gets one little bite.” It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. Other categories include eggs, butter and cheese, cultivated forage crops, fruit, preserving, vegetables, flowers, handicrafts, needleworks, art, and photography.
The judges for all categories are kept anonymous to preserve the sanctity of their decisions. “They volunteer out of the goodness of their heart, because they love doing it, and they believe in the overall goodness of the fair,” Cronin said, “but they don’t want to be hassled about the decision that they made.” What sort of situation are they hoping to avoid? Perhaps a judge is shopping at Cronig’s Market and gets approached by someone who didn’t get the recognition they wanted, she explained.
“We all look at something that we create and we think, ‘Oh my god, this is such a masterpiece.’ When someone doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a masterpiece, your feelings get hurt.”
So, the judges work in secrecy, but then, when the hall doors open and the crowds come pouring in, they get to sit back and see the reactions. Kids run to their art, see the ribbon, and excitedly show their parents and their friends. Adult artists and makers are just as moved.
However, if the entries don’t win, there’s a lesson there. “I encourage them, and I say, ‘You know what, there’s next year. Try again next year. Please come back,’” she said. “It’s like American Idol: we loved you, but you weren’t quite what we were looking for, but come back next year. People take that to heart, and they want to participate, and they do come back.”
The vast majority of the fairgoers who pass through the hall haven’t submitted anything for consideration, at least not yet. Cronin thinks about these people as well, many of whom are awed by what their neighbors can do. “Everyone walks away so inspired,” she said, “and I just hope that never changes.”
