"Thorson, a 20-year-old from the town of Waverly, was crowned as the 72nd Princess Kay of the Milky Way on Wednesday night. And her first official duty as the goodwill ambassador for the state's 1,800 dairy farm families was to bundle up and sit in a rotating glassed-in studio at 40 degrees F (4 Celsius) as fairgoers gathered to watch Kulzer turn a 90-pound (41-kilogram) block of salted butter into art."
"Other state fairs also feature butter sculptures. The Iowa State Fair has been famous for its life-sized Butter Cow for over a century. A replica will be displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery in Washington starting Saturday. The 2025 New York State Fair butter sculpture, unveiled Tuesday, is a 900-pound (410-kilogram) nod to the 125th anniversary of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by New York state native L. Frank Baum."
"But in Minnesota, all 10 of the dairy princess finalists get a likeness of their heads carved before an ever-changing live audience. Each one gets to take their sculpture home after the fair, along with a bucket of the scraps. They can deep-freeze their heads as souvenirs or share them with family and friends, maybe spreading some of the butter onto corn on the cob."
A 20-year-old named Thorson was crowned the 72nd Princess Kay of the Milky Way and served as goodwill ambassador for the state's 1,800 dairy farm families. Her first duty required sitting in a rotating, glassed-in studio at about 40 degrees F while sculptor Gerry Kulzer carved her head from a 90-pound block of salted butter, continuing a 60-year Minnesota tradition. Other state fairs also feature large butter sculptures, including Iowa's Butter Cow and a 900-pound New York tribute to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In Minnesota, all ten dairy princess finalists receive butter head likenesses to take home.
Read at Fortune
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]