New York’s state fair opens Tuesday, but one major event is already underway: The annual carving of 800 pounds of butter into an artistic display to highlight New York’s status as one of America’s biggest dairy producers.
The butter sculpture, one of several events around the country run by the American Dairy Association, has been a feature of the fair at Syracuse since 1969; for the past few years the sculptors have been Jim Victor and Marie Pelton who unpacked the butter and their tools and have begun work on the sculpture. The image above is last year’s product.
The organizers point out that despite all that butter, there’s actually no waste. The butter is collected from a processor who sets aside butter that didn’t quite meet retail standards, and after the fair, it goes to a digester plant that mixes it with other food waste to be recycled into renewable energy.
