Grace Mullen was four years old when she went out in her pink rubber boots to hoe a field for the first time.
Her mother momentarily panicked when she couldn’t see her daughter who had fallen asleep between the rows of soybeans.
That little Comber girl would grow up wanting to be a farmer. Eventually she’d be hacking at weeds with a hoe on her own in a 100-acre soybean field, driving a combine and learning how to market a crop.
Miss Comber winner Grace Mullen. (Courtesy of Grace Mullen)
Mullen, 19, also grew up wanting to be crowned Miss Comber Fair. She won that crown last summer and in August will represent Comber Fair and Essex County in the Canadian National Exhibition’s annual Ambassador of the Fairs competition Aug. 21-23.
“It’s sort of a dream come true in a way,” Mullen said.
Just don’t call it a beauty pageant.
Mullen, who is also Essex County’s Queen of the Furrow which requires knowing how to plow a field, said the Miss Comber Fair Pageant may include a crown and being evaluated on your walk past the judges but there’s more to it. There’s an essay, an interview and a question to answer in front of the fairground crowds and other fairs let young men compete too. She said the title is more about representing the fair she loves.
Mullen will be up against 77 ambassadors including three young men at the CNE’s Ambassador of the Fairs competition. Since 1971, more than 3,000 young people have participated from more than 100 Ontario communities in the competition. She said the Comber Fair is the only local one that currently sends an ambassador to the competition.
The winner receives $3,500 and will represent the CNE and Ontario fairs for a year and travel across the province to educate the public on farming. The top seven contestants receive cash prizes. Mullen expects it will be an amazing experience.
Her father Tim never let the fact that he and his wife Bernadette’s only child was a girl stop him from encouraging her to someday take over the cash crop and hog farm, she said. Mullen plans on it and is going to enter her second year studying agriculture business at the University of Guelph this fall.
The 156th Comber Fair is Aug. 7 -9. A new Miss Comber Fair will be crowned Aug. 7. The group British Beat 66 will provide the main entertainment Aug. 8 and the fair also includes a free wrestling show, a singing contest, lawn mower racing, a team scavenger hunt, the Essex and Kent 4H Beef Show and a demolition derby.
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