Should you be concerned? Sure.

Is there anything you can do about it? Probably not if they aren't interested. If it is a state or county sponsored fair then they are subject to the guidelines but if the county/state extension chooses not to enforce them there is little you can do.

Dave

Not state or county extension - just a few Granges in the area that get together and do this - been maybe 50 years?

If you've notified the grange, shared the current standards, and asked the lady taking entries about it, I think you've done your due diligence and will have to let the issue drop.

You could of course notify the appropriate agency that oversees these events but again, I wouldn't have any expectation anything will be done, due in part to short staffing and in part to ignorance/indifference.

In a lot of these cases someone has to get sick before anyone gets a clue.

Carol

Well, maybe somebody will read my email and start asking for recipes and checking for correct acidity/processing next year. When I emailed them about filling out DD's entry forms they got back to me right away, said thanks for pointing out that the example of a 10-yr old's entry didn't match the division and classes for the items. So I thought they'd welcome info on what other fairs (one we visited in RI and also the Big E regional fair) were doing about canned goods.

DD was so cute - I filled the jars for her jelly, she was checking HS and wiping rims, putting the lids on so I could put in the canner for her. She asked "How much headspace?" I'm surprised she knew that word!

Too bad no ribbon for her - I used the Ball NS pectin, 3T for 4C of store-bought apple juice, mixed the pectin with 1/3C sugar as Marla suggested, it seemed to dissolve when she put it in the juice and stirred as it was heating, then she dumped in another 1C and 1/3C sugar all at once, I set the timer to boil 2 minutes and it started gelling as soon as I took it off the heat! I kept having to put it back on the burner as we were filling jars - and it was only 4 jars. So they're a bit cloudy, but at least the HS is correct LOL!

I found ANY juice, store bought or homemade needs to be strained carefully. Absolutely NO squeezing, only letting it drip.

I'm glad she's so happy and knowledgeable. She will be a big help during season.

Years ago I saw a teenager's entry for canned green beans. I do have to say it was a beautiful presentation and the kids got real fancy with labels and putting fabric over the lid and ribbons on it. But this one stood out. The preparer had trimmed the ends off very straight green beans to an length the height of the pint jar, and packed them on end in a wide mouth jar as tightly as they could be slid into the jar..... like so many green pencils. One may as well have canned one huge bean, as I don't see how there could have been much space left in the jar for liquid. Yeah.......she got the blue. There had to be density issues.

I remember a jar of green beans on display (with a ribbon) that was done in absolutely exact short lengths and the jar filled in a pattern, with a layer horizontal, then another vertical and so on to the top like a patchwork quilt....who does that, do you know how long it would take to layer and fill a jar? Great visual appeal, no practicality :)

And ajsmama, mistakes at Fairs may happen more often than we would guess. I haven't been to many but clearly remember seeing a quart (QUART!) of tuna that should have only been in pts or half pts at a small rural fair one year. It had a ribbon.

Well, the Jr salsa in quarts got the blue and so did my salsa in pints (they never remove the bands to see that the headspace isn't clean - I always have trouble with tomato-based stuff bubbling up and leaving residue, even if it didn't siphon like my first PCed tomatoes did).

DD's jelly (which was made from storebought juice so the juice was clear, we thought the candy and pectin was all dissolved before she added the sugar) did too - and the kids get really fancy ribbons with rosettes. She's over the moon, so I don't want to burst her bubble. One kid had a beautiful peach jelly - that got the blue too. DD's was the only "Other Jelly" so maybe that's why she got it, though I had the only "Other Jelly" in the adult class and only got a red for Apricot-Pepper (which I shouldn't have gotten at all, I had some beautiful stained-glass looking jelly from Carol's Confetti Jelly recipe but no pectin added, it wasn't set hard - I don't like hard jellies, esp. pepper jellies - so I put some vinegar and apricots in a pan, boiled, let stand overnight, opened the jars and added, then boiled it down hard - it set up all right, and all the peppers were at the top since it set so quickly I couldn't do the swirl thing after they'd cooled a little. It also turned kind of brown. Not my best effort but I didn't have anything else to submit in the "other" category. They said they won't change categories but we saw some in nuts (our hickory nuts won blue).

I did see some fresh peppers disqualified b/c they were sweet and had been submitted as hot, etc. And note on 1 canning entry (fruit, I forget what) about bottoms of jars not being clean. I guess it all depends on the judge.

Not many canning entries this year - I forget if we went last year (I didn't enter, too busy) but 2 years ago when I entered there were a lot of canned goods. This year the adult canning section took up 3 shelves, maybe 6-8ft long. One lady (I saw when I was dropping mine off) submitted 3 dozen jars of jam/jelly (3-5 per variety depending on whether it was single flavor or collection), I saw her name on pints/quarts of canned fruit too, there was another name that seemed to come up quite often (they display the names on the tags of the winning items after judging) that since there were so many ribbons awarded, only 2-3 entries in a few classes like strawberry jam, applesauce, peach jam, that there were most likely only half a dozen people who entered canned goods at all, another 3 did maple syrup and there were a few others who did dehydrated, vinegars, etc. that I didn't look closely at.