Member, Minnesota State Fair · 4-Hpaper Association (in spirit)
Vol. CXXIX — No. 35  •  Misquah, Minnesota  •  The Chain of Lakes
Tuesday, September 8, 2026  •  The Last Tuesday of Summer
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The Voice of the Chain of Lakes

The Misquah Pilot-Independent

“Where the coffee’s hot, the lakes are cold, and all the children are above average.” — Serving the Chain since 1897.



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State Fair · 4-H

Eleven Came Home: The Delegation’s Results, and One Member’s Last Trip

Final placings for the Misquah 4-H delegation, posted at the extension office as they arrived. Nobody won a purple. Two came close, one came home annoyed, and Christopher Jonson aged out on a Sunday afternoon.

By Marvella Tollefson  •  September 8, 2026

State Fair results and blue and red 4-H ribbons on a bulletin board
State Fair results and ribbons go up at the extension office after the Misquah delegation returns home. — Pilot-Independent photo

The last Misquah trailer came back Labor Day evening. The extension office has posted the delegation’s results, and they are, as results at that level usually are, respectable and unspectacular. Nobody brought home a purple. Nobody expected to.

In the general project divisions: Mable Anderson, 10, took a blue on food preservation for dill pickles, in a class she reports had “way more people than the whole fair at home.” Kyliegh Braaten, 14, took a red in photography and has already identified what she thinks the problem was, which is the sky in one corner. Victoria Vang, 9, on her first trip, took a blue on the jumper she made and has worn it twice since, once to school.

Christopher Jonson, 17, took a blue on the rebuilt two-stroke and spent, by his own count, twenty-two minutes with a judge who asked about the notebook and not the engine. “The notebook is the project,” he said. “They tell you that when you’re nine and you don’t believe it until somebody spends twenty-two minutes on it.”

Jonson ages out this year. Asked whether he would come back as a helper, he said he supposed he would, and that somebody has to hold the halters.

In the animal classes: Maren Vekved fourth of thirty-one in dairy calf; Greta Vekved eleventh with Bernice; Liv Vekved mid-class with the dairy steer that stood still on purpose. Callie Tho, 15, placed ninth in market beef in a class of forty-four, which her father describes as “ninth in the state, and she is fifteen, and I would like people to hear it that way.” Owen Bergstrom, 18, took a red with the market hog in his last year of eligibility. Halen Patrick’s pen of broilers took a blue.

David Ruud, 13, placed sixth in market lamb and reports it is the best he has ever done at anything, a statement his mother asked this newspaper to print exactly as he said it.

Club advisor records show the eleven members logged 214 project hours between the county fair and Labor Day, not counting driving. The 2027 project sign-up opens in November.

Accuracy matters here. If you see something that needs correcting, send it to the newsroom. Material corrections are noted online and in the next print edition.