One thousand pounds of Pennsylvania-made butter have formed a work of art celebrating the dairy farmers of the Keystone State and their cattle.
The Pennsylvania Farm Show unveiled its annual butter sculpture for the 2025 event on Thursday. The sculpture is called “From Moo to Marvel: Dairy Cows Power Pennsylvania.”
Conshohocken-based artists Jim Victor and Marie Pelton spent weeks sculpting a massive cow and additional smaller pieces like a wheel of cheese, a jug of milk, a barn, plants and a methane digester.
Land O’Lakes, which has a plant in Carlisle, Cumberland County, donated the butter used in the sculpture. The American Dairy Association announced the sculpture in a news release and said it highlights how waste and byproducts from cows and dairy farms can help create energy.
The methane digester, also called an anaerobic digester, takes waste products like manure, leftover frying oil, sewage and even pre-sculpted butter and converts them to biogas and solid digestate. Biogas is mostly methane and can be used by natural gas companies for heating and electricity or turned into fuel for vehicles.
Digestate can be treated and turned into fertilizer or compost for farmers’ fields.
Pelton and Victor have worked on butter sculptures together for 25 years. They spoke to CBS News Philadelphia in 2024 after the unveiling of last year’s farm show sculpture, “A Table For All,” showing a family at a dinner table with their animals.
That sculpture was placed in a methane digester and broken down into energy after last year’s Farm Show.
“It has a whole life after being a work of art,” Pelton said last year.
The latest sculpture will meet the same fate.
While it’s still intact, you can see the sculpture up close at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, running Jan. 4-11, 2025, at the Farm Show Complex and Expo Center in Harrisburg.
In addition to this dairy art, the farm show features animal shows, sales and photo judging, various competitive cooking contests, rodeo events and much more.
You can now read the most important #news on #eDairyNews #Whatsapp channels!!!
🇺🇸 eDairy News INGLÊS: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaKsjzGDTkJyIN6hcP1K
