The Tomato Show will be back on the vine this year in Fredericktown.
The Sept. 8-11 street festival, which grew out of the national bicentennial celebration in 1976, had been held every year since 1977 but was canceled last year because of COVID-19.
“This would have been our 45th year,” Chris Well, president of the Tomato Show Board, told the Mount Vernon News. “But since we didn’t get to have it last year, it’s actually our 44th year.”
Well, a retired schoolteacher, has been volunteering since the festival’s beginning.
For the bicentennial celebration, local farmer and businessman Jim Shipley was asked to help organize a community celebration, Well said.
”He said, 'Yes,' but only if he could continue it as a street fair,” Well said. “That’s how we started. In 1977, he got some of us together. The Bicentennial Committee gave us $50, and we started the Tomato Show.”
Why is it called the Tomato Show?
“Because Jim Shipley didn’t want it to be called a street fair,” said Well.
But this is not to suggest there is no tomato involvement. Throughout the event, there will be contests judging tomato products, landscape vegetables, baked goods and canned goods, plus Dumbaugh Insurance tomato classes.
It has been a long-lasting, successful event for Fredericktown.
The Tomato Show usually attracts from 5,000 to 6,000 visitors each year.
“The Tomato Show is kind of like a homecoming,” Well said. “It’s a time that you can come back and see people that you haven’t seen for years possibly. A lot of classes plan their reunions around it. Some enter floats in the parade.”
There are bathtub races.
“There is a driver and two pushers,” Well said. “The driver sits in ice water, and they add tomato juice.”
There is a tomato toss where contestants shoot tomatoes to another person who tries to catch them with a basket.
There will be a kids' parade on Thursday night, a baby crawling contest on Friday and a 5K race on Saturday, followed by a big parade and then a limited plate auction in the early evening.
“That’s 10 plates that a local artist paints for us,” Well said. “We auction those off, and that’s basically how we make our money, that and the concessions.”
If you go:
The Fredericktown Tomato Show is scheduled for Sept. 8-11.
This year's theme: “The Places You’ll Go”
This year's Main Stage sponsors are:
- Park National Bank (Wednesday and Saturday)
- Ariel Corp. (Thursday)
- Central Ohio Farmers Co-Op (Friday)
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