Local Family Submitted 65 Entries at 2013 Washington County Fair

While talking with another parent at the Washington County Fair this year, Woodbury resident Debbi Castro said she was almost embarrassed to reveal the number of project entries from her three children.

It was 64. That’s a fairly typical number, too.

“Crafts is our big one,” Castro said.

Her children have been submitting projects at the Washington County Fair since the kids—Katie, 13, Josh, 11, and Chelsea, 9—were little.

“I’ve been asked before how it all started,” Castro said. “I truly cannot remember.”

Chelsea, with 33 entries, was the leader this year, though Castro got in on the action with a “token entry” in the digital memory books category, highlighting her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.

They usually stick to baking, needlework, arts, woodworking and crafts rather than plants and animals.

“We’re a typical suburban family,” Castro said.

Though the children are home-schooled, they do spend two days a week at a co-op school in Forest Lake, and they often tweak existing projects for their Washington County Fair entries.

While Chelsea, an aspiring equestrian, had the most entries (33), Josh won the grand champion prize for his mini-M&M brownies, and one of Katie’s projects—a clay model of a sounding rocket in the aerospace category—is moving on to the Minnesota State Fair.

Katie said she’s into sci-fi, and wants to be an astronaut when she grows up.

Josh, meanwhile, an avid athlete, was quick to answer about favorite part of the Washington County Fair: “Mostly food. I liked the deep-fried Oreos.”

The children are also active in karate and other activities, and certainly stay busy before and during the fair.

“And we have to fit sleep and school work in there somewhere,” Katie said.

On Monday, the family was still cleaning up from all the projects entered in the 2013 Washington County Fair.

“My house is a disaster right now,” Castro said.

Breakdown

Below are the ribbon placements for the kids’ Washington County Fair project entries.

Chelsea: 33 projects, five firsts, three seconds, 11 thirds, five fourths, four fifths, four sixths, one no ribbon.

Josh: 15 projects, three firsts, three seconds, one third, three fourths, four fifths, one sixth. (One of the firsts was grand champion for mini-M&M brownies.)

Katie: Seven projects, two firsts, two seconds, two thirds, one fourth.

Katie (4-H): Eight projects, seven blue ribbons, one red ribbon. Three projects earned State Fair trips. Kids can only enter one, so she chose her aerospace entry.

Debbi: One project, third.