Take A Peek At The Iowa State Fair

Dave Price Talks To A Few Exhibitors

(CBS)  This year marks the 149th year of the Iowa State Fair and the theme is "One In A Million." The fair will run from Aug. 7-17.

Last year, more than 1 million people attended and this year's crowd, expected to be just as big, includes The Early Show's Dave Price.

The fair offers everything from concerts and rides to food and contests for eating and for other skills.

One competition is the junior dairy cattle show, which consists of walking the cows around in a circle in front of judges. Price spoke with very confident competitors: Jeff Jr. (14) and Bradley (11) Byers. They are experienced dairy showmen who have been milking cows since they could walk. Last month, they won every show in the 2003 Warren County Junior Fair. The brothers live on a family-operated dairy farm, comprised of 55 cows, with their father and mother in Milo, Iowa.

Every year, the Byers family spends its summer vacation at the Iowa State Fair, not in a hotel, but sleeping in the cattle barn with their cows. Jeff Jr. and Bradley say they love it.

Another hopeful is Clarence Asmus, a lawyer and hog breeder from Monroe, Wis., who has raised breed stocks for the last 30 years. Although, Asmus sold all of his stock in January, he kept what he called a "perfectly structured" pig, named Ranger.

At 4 years old, Ranger is a purebred Yorkshire, nearly five feet tall, nine feet long, and as of last spring, 1,105 pounds in heft. Asmus is entering Ranger into "the big boar" competition. The hog that weighs the most determines the winner. There is a small award of $150 and a ribbon for the first-place winner. For Asmus, however, the money is not what matters, it's the bragging rights.

Asmus claims that Ranger is very popular locally and he made a Web site (www.biggestboaronearth.com) dedicated to Ranger's fans.

At the fair, Price also met Duffy Lyon, a 73-year-old butter sculptor and diary farmer from Toledo, Iowa. She's been creating butter cows for the Iowa State Fair since 1960. This year, in addition to the usual butter cow, she also created a butter Harley-Davidson in honor of the motorcycle company's 100th anniversary.

People who attend the fair get to watch Lyon work inside the cooler by looking into a window created for just that purpose.

To make a butter cow, Lyon starts with a wood, metal, wire and steel mesh frame and about 600 pounds of low-moisture, pure cream Iowa butter, most of which is recycled from past years' exhibits. She first softens the buckets of butter at room temperature to make the butter "workable." Inside the cooler, layers of butter are applied until a life-size butter cow emerges - measuring about 5-1/2-feet high and 8-feet long. The butter takes approximately 20 to 30 minutes to set. Lyon begins on the head and body, and works her way down to the hooves; the entire process takes about 24 hours.

But perhaps the most unique food competition offered at Iowa's State Fair is the Ugly Cake Competition. Only kids, ages 7-17, are allowed to participate and they compete in several age groups. All entries are divided into two categories, based on whether the cake was made with a particular theme.

Price spoke with a few of the competitors. Taylor Sheets, 9, from Des Moines, Iowa, is in the contest for a second year. He got honorable mention last year. This year, his cake is made with crawfish, tuna, green frosting, a gummy rat and spider. It had rice on top of the craw to represent maggots. He said it took approximately 10-15 minutes to put the whole cake together.

Laura Hollister, also 9, entered a dog poop cake - chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, coconut (died green to represent grass), topped with a fake fly dipped in chocolate.

Savannah Wright, 12, also is in her second year of the contest and also got honorable mention last year. It took her almost two hours to put her whole creation together. Savannah's cake is an Iowa Fair Dumpster, made with candy peach rings (colored black), candy necklaces and a big sign that says "the big one" to represent last year's theme.