Veggies Are Fair Game : Smiling Eggplants, Diving Carrots Bring Bushels of Fun to the County Today

With sky divers dressed as carrots and animated beans preaching an end to gang violence, Orange County Fair entertainers and exhibitors have taken the art of theme-stretching to new heights.

The challenge to build the best booth in keeping with the theme “We’re Having Bushels of Fun” has driven exhibitors and vendors to such vegetable-oriented offerings as golf balls covered with corn paintings, mushroom lamps, and a $125 acrylic painting of smiling eggplants and tomatoes sitting in a Ferris wheel made of vegetable parts.

When the fair opens at 9:30 this morning at the Orange County Fairgrounds, walking vegetables will greet fair-goers, and a bean, corn, garlic bulb, mushroom and carrot will parachute from the sky.

Lt. Orville King with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department explained what he called “friendly competition” that drove the Orange County Chief’s and Sheriff’s Assn. to spend $3,000 on a slick, multimedia legume-filled anti-gang exhibit.

“The idea is to provide your message in the best way possible, so that people walking through will be drawn to it,” he said.

The laminated, computer-animated backdrop features a cowboy-hatted Jack Bean battling bad bean gangbangers to recover the “golden self-esteem” crown and transform his crime-ridden village into a peaceful, cooperative neighborhood.

Although the fair abounds with painted-wood, stuffed-cotton and cardboard veggies, it does showcase real vegetables too. A football-sized lemon, 70-pound pumpkin and an 11-pound zucchini will be on display in the Harvest Tent. Corn from across the nation will be judged in the Corn Derby at 3 p.m. today.

Food vendors will feature everything from corn on the cob to deep-fried artichoke hearts--along with the usual offerings from corn dogs to beef teriyaki on a stick.

Since most Orange County’s kids are surrounded by strip malls rather than cornfields, fair organizers hope the theme will teach them what has to happen to a vegetable before it appears in the produce aisles.

“A lot of times the only times kids see vegetables is in the grocery store,” said Ezzy Guerrero, a marketing assistant with the fair. “Here they actually get a chance to see them in a farm setting.”

But will all this bombardment of vegetable imagery get kids to eat their Brussels sprouts?

“Well . . .” Guerrero said, hesitating. “It depends on how attractive you make them. You can’t change the taste.”

Fair Facts More than 685,000 people are expected to attend the 17-day Orange County Fair, beginning today. Some tidbits about the fair: The annual budget is $11.8 million; there are 68 full-time employees year-round. Proceeds make up 45% of the revenue needed to run the fairgrounds the rest of the year. More than 75% of fair-goers attend more than once; 60% attend more than three times. The 1992 Junior Livestock Auction raised $146,324 for 4-H and Future Farmers of America members. Most fair-goers come from Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana or Garden Grove. Source: Orange County Fair & Exposition Center