The Michigan Soybean Festival

I headed out to the Fowlerville Fairgrounds with my wife to take in some knowledge of the soybean. A mere $3 entrance fee (with free parking) and a few free hours were all that was needed. Who knew that there would be so many cute chicks there, too.


There were swap meet vendors, an old Model A, and some tractors on display. We missed the tractor pull and the evening entertainment, but the Historical Village was open, and the soybean displays were interesting.

Being ‘city slickers’, we decided that farmers are pretty ingenious. Who else could get you to buy tickets to ‘cow pie bingo,’ a game where you literally pay to watch where a cow poops. A grid is drawn on the ground and a well fed cow then walks around and does its thing. The grid with the most ‘stuff’ is the winner. As my wife said, “at least we didn’t have to fling it or pick it up.”

And because this is a two-day event, your hand stamp was good for both days. There were a lot of other things going on in the County this weekend which likely hurt the attendance a bit, but it’s an interesting concept and has the potential to grow.

Really, it’s a celebration of farm life, and I was surprised to find that Michigan has over 2 million acres of soybeans planted and that it is our number two crop, adding about a billion dollars to the State’s economy. That’s a pretty good reason to celebrate the soybean, too.