2024 Farm Show butter sculpture unveiled

It wouldn’t be the Pennsylvania Farm Show without a sculpture lovingly crafted through the medium of butter.

Sculptors Jim Victor and Marie Pelton have once again graced the Farm Show Complex with an original work of art, crafted in over 1,000 pounds of butter shaped over a wire mesh framework.

The sculpture features people gathering at a table for a meal of food from Pennsylvania farms, with a backdrop of both a farm and city skyline. It was designed to tie into the theme of this year’s Farm Show, “Connecting Our Communities.”

The Thursday reveal included remarks from Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding and dairy farmer Walt Moore of Walmoore Holsteins farm in West Fallowfield Township, Chester County.

“We’re here today to present an important work of art,” Moore said. “Two renown artists from Pennsylvania took locally-made butter produced by commonwealth dairy farmers, like me, and produced a beautiful sculpture.

“Every year, the butter sculpture provides us with a creative opportunity to tell our story.”

“We understand that our success is connected to this community,” Redding said. “That will be celebrated throughout this week. It is the theme that captures the intricate ties of those relationships, the interdependence that is so critical to Pennsylvania, and to a functioning society, quite frankly.”

The butter used for the sculpture each year has been deemed unfit for consumption and will be recycled into energy after the sculpture’s removal at the end of the Farm Show events.

This year marks the 108th annual Farm Show event.