Bob Hall, 95, walked onto the grounds of the 2025 Kentucky State Fair on Aug. 11 with a picnic basket in one hand and a cane in the other.
More than one person offered to carry the basket for him, and he kindly waved them off.
He’d stood at his kitchen counter and hand peeled all the apples that had gone into his apple pie and sifted all the flour for his pound cake.
Certainly, he could carry the basket that held his Kentucky State Fair entries just fine.
Hall is no stranger to the Kentucky State Fair, he told me as we sat in the North Wing of the Kentucky Exposition Center. The Georgetown-based man made his living raising sheep and in the feed business, and he has enjoyed this summertime showcase of the Bluegrass State’s agriculture since it was held at Churchill Downs during World War II. In his younger years, he showed livestock. Up until about two decades ago, he smoked nearly 4,000 pounds of lamb annually at the fair for the Kentucky Sheep and Wool Producers Association in a smoker he built.
But in 2024, after more than 80 years of participating in the fair in one way or another, he hit a new milestone.
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At 94-years-old, he entered the culinary competition for the first time, and he came home with a blue ribbon for his shortbread cookies.
Now, he was back again.
Hall’s first foray into baking was in high school. His mother taught him to make bread, and he had a strong motivation to take it seriously. She baked bread every Saturday morning, and the recipe called for it to sit in the refrigerator over night.
The rule was “I couldn’t go out on a date, until I made bread on Friday night,” he told me.
His blue ribbon winning shortbread recipe came about much later.
Several years ago, while he was president of the National Suffolk Sheep Association, he traveled through England and Scotland on a Suffolk sheep tour. Every day at 10 a.m. on that trip, the group had to stop for tea and shortbread, he explained. Hall enjoyed it so much, that he convinced a woman from Alabama, who was also on the tour, to sweet talk a shortbread recipe out of their hosts.
For a long time, he made shortbread for friends, family and people he knew from church.
“It got to where I was probably using 35 pounds of butter every Christmas making shortbread,” he told me, laughing.
So that shortbread was a natural fit for one of the two culinary entries he baked in 2024. He skipped that category this year, though, and opted to bake a pound cake instead.
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“I won last year with shortbread, so no need to coming back for that,” he told me.
But his apple pie from last year didn’t place, so he was back for a second try at that.
“What makes a good apple pie?” I asked him.
“The type of apples,” he told me. “And seasoning it, so that nothing overpowers anything, it’s just very palatable.”
That’s one of the more difficult categories to win, because its such a popular dessert. So many families have favorite apple pie recipes.
“Good luck,” the woman behind the check-in table told him.
“You have to take what you get and be glad you got it,” he told her, humbly.
Before we parted ways, I asked him what kept him coming back to the fair after all these years.
“I think a big part of it is seeing the good livestock and revisiting with friends, sometimes its only once a year we see them and it's down here,” Hall told me. “You swap tales, and it’s friendship. Friendship has always been very important to me.”
“So it’s not about winning,” I said, and to my surprise, he disagreed.
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“You’ve got to want to win if you’re going to show, because if you don’t want to win you’ll never win,” he said. “It’s work, but you’ve got to enjoy it.”
Whether or not he wins, he enjoyed baking those entries on the morning of Aug. 11.
But he’s certainly hoping the judges enjoy them, too.
Editors note: The 2025 Kentucky State Fair culinary competition results will be announced on Thursday, Aug. 15. This story will be updated to include whether Bob Hall placed.
Reach Courier Journal features columnist Maggie Menderski at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: 2025 Kentucky State Fair culinary contest apple pie and pound cake
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