6 Old-Fashioned Things the Blount County Fair Still Does Every Year
The Blount County Fair runs through Saturday at the Multi-Purpose Center in Cleveland, Alabama.
Gate admission is $5, and kids five and under get in free.
What’s inside hasn’t changed much in decades, and that’s on purpose.
These are the old-fashioned things the Blount County Fair still does every year.
$5 for Blue Ribbon Jam
The Blount County Fair runs Sept. 15-19 at the Blount County Multi-Purpose Center in Cleveland, and its 2026 exhibitor guide still pays cash for a jar of home-canned jam.
First place earns five dollars.
Second place earns three dollars, and third earns two.
The categories run through jams, jellies, preserves, pickles, relishes, canned vegetables, and canned fruit.
Nobody’s getting rich off a winning batch of pickles.
The same fair board runs a separate division for baked goods, with categories for yeast bread, pies, cakes, cookies, and candy.
There’s also a diet and sugar-free class for anyone watching their intake.
Anyone 18 or younger enters the youth categories instead of competing against the adults.
Entrants still bring their jars in every year anyway because the ribbon on the shelf is the point, not the $5.
Who Counts as “Youth” at the Fair
The Blount County Fair splits nearly every exhibit category by age, not just livestock.
Anyone 18 or younger competes in the youth division across canning, produce, and baked goods.
Handiwork and household linens add a second split on the other end, with a senior division set aside for entrants 60 and older.
A Nightly Kitchen Demo
Blount County’s fair board schedules a live kitchen demonstration every single night of the run.
The Alabama Farmers Federation (ALFA) sends someone to cook in front of whoever wanders by.
There’s no stage and no ticket required.
It’s just a folding table, a hot plate, and whatever’s in season that week.
That’s five nights straight, from Tuesday’s opening bell to Saturday’s rides, tucked in between the livestock judging and the children’s events the fair also runs every evening.
It’s not going viral.
It’s just supper, cooked in public, the same way ALFA’s been doing it there for years.
Animals Judged One at a Time
Kids’ rabbits, lambs, goats, horses, and steers still go into a single ring at the Blount County Fair, one species a night.
A judge walks each animal past in person before naming a winner.
Tuesday starts with exhibit judging before the gates even open at 6 p.m.
Wednesday belongs to the rabbits.
Thursday brings lambs and goats into the ring together.
Friday’s for horses.
Saturday closes with the steer and heifer show.
There’s no leaderboard flashing on a screen. Just one judge, walking the ring, deciding on the spot while a kid who’s spent months raising that animal gets a few minutes to show for it.
A 4-H Chick Auction Open to All
The Blount County Fair still runs a Chick Chain Show for its 4-H kids on the final Saturday morning, with registration from 10 to 11 a.m.
The show itself starts at 11.
It’s over fast.
The auction begins afterward, tentatively at 12:30 p.m.
The fair’s listing puts it plainly: The public is encouraged to attend and bid.
There’s no online catalog and no invitation list.
Anyone standing at the ring that afternoon can raise a hand and buy a kid’s chicken.
A kid who’s spent months raising that chicken watches it sell to whoever’s standing there.
Psst! How much do you know about Alabama’s biggest fairs and festivals? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
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Alabama Fair Trivia
Answer these questions on Alabama’s biggest fairs and festivals. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Who was the featured guest speaker at Dothan’s very first National Peanut Festival?
A Week of Free Plant-Watering
The Blount County Fair's plant division comes with one extra service.
Fair staff water every potted plant themselves, other than cactus and succulents, all week long, according to the 2026 exhibitor guide.
It's not glamorous.
An exhibitor who needs something different, more water or less, has to write the instructions down and hand them over.
Cut flowers and herbs still have to be grown by the exhibitor, and a plant can't have won a ribbon there in the past two years.
Somebody just walks the exhibit hall with a watering can all week so a fern doesn't die before pickup.
Handmade Quilts, Judged by Hand
Blount County's fair still runs a full division for handmade quilts, afghans, and other household linens.
The rules even cap how old an entry can be: A quilt can't be more than 15 years old.
Cross-stitch, crochet, knitting, weaving, lye soap, hand-dipped candles, and pottery all get categories too, filed under a class the fair calls Homestead Craftsmanship.
Many of those categories split into a youth division and a senior division for entrants 60 and older.
No computer decides it.
A 14-year-old's cross-stitch and a 70-year-old's quilt compete on completely different pages of the same catalog.
The art division runs the same way, with paintings, drawings, and photography sorted by age bracket.
Entrants must mount every photo on an 11-by-14-inch black poster board before a judge will even look at it.
The fair even built an exhibit category around its 2026 theme, "Stars, Stripes, and Fairground Nights."
The Household Linens division alone covers quilts, afghans, tablecloths, pillows, and aprons, each in a separate category.
Judges still pin the blue ribbon right to the quilt at the Blount County Fair before it heads back home.
8 Things Alabamians Keep in the Freezer That Baffle Everyone Else
Dothan crowned itself the boiled peanut capital of the world back in 1929, and the name never left.
A batch of boiled peanuts spoils in about a week even in the fridge.
That's why freezers earn their keep long after the fair packs up, and peanuts are only where the list starts.
8 Things Alabamians Keep in the Freezer That Baffle Everyone Else
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Scottsboro has served one hot dog topping since long before today's diners even opened, and few other counters nearby serve it quite the same way.
The shop still ladles the recipe onto a hot dog at a soda-fountain counter that's been pouring floats since the drugstore era.
