Photo by lorigoldberg.

Who doesn’t like a fair? There’s little better than that first time you make your way onto the grounds of the festival — scents of fried food and pie hit your nose, the ubiquitous laughter of children a wonderful aural prelude to a day spent scarfing cotton candy and funnel cake while riding the Ferris wheel as the sun goes down. We’re big fans of the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair that takes place every summer (and is but eight days away), but wouldn’t it be nice if the District had its own version of this summertime tradition?

Well, three local bloggers are trying to make that happen — at least as much of the experience as they can logistically pull together. Amelia Showalter, Jenna Huntsberger and Kenneth Moore are working feverishly to organize the D.C. State Fair — and while it certainly won’t be able to boast gargantuan carnival rides (after all, space is kind of at a premium inside D.C.), it’ll be ours, dammit. We managed to get the organizers to take a short break from planning the fair’s Tastiest Tomato contest to talk about the fair.

So what was your inspiration for putting together a D.C. state fair?

It’s a need that D.C. has — there are so many organizations in the District with a focus on agriculture, so many community gardens, and so much focus right now on agriculture and home gardening in general, that it would be a disservice to the community NOT to have a gathering to celebrate urban agriculture! And D.C. is full of people who love cooking, baking, home canning, and so forth. Anywhere else in the country, you’d be able to enter your prize tomato or secret-recipe pie in the county fair. We thought D.C. residents should have the same opportunity.