Ultimate Purple Pot Plant Takes Blue Ribbon At State Fair

Mr & Mrs Ethan Hanson

It’s a first for the Alaska State Fair, and a win for those who are hip on hippie lettuce.  Last year, the Oregon State Fair awarded ribbons for best cannabis plant, and now Alaska has crowned a first place on a Kenai Peninsula marijuana plant at the Ninilchik State Fair.

Soldotna born Ethan Hanson grew the prize winning plant at his homestead in Clam Gulch for personal medicinal use. The hybrid indica strain called Ultimate Purple was grown from seeds he purchased on the web.

The plant doesn’t have purple leaves, but according to Hanson it comes by it’s name honestly.

Ethan Hanson: “It tastes like grapes when you ingest it.”

Kenai Peninsula State Fair has no special division for cannabis, so Hanson entered it in the Herb Division, Class 19 – Other. The entry and the win came as a surprise to Fair organizers.

Ninilchik Alaska State Fair Exhibits Organizer Kelly White: “I didn’t actually know that it was in there until I walked through the fairgrounds the next morning.  It was a surprise to me, I didn’t expect it at all.” 

White said she believes it was the only cannabis plant entered in the fair, and she has no idea what criteria they used to judge it by.  White advises that the State Fair Board has yet to discuss if they will accept further entries of the plant, but the win has made other Alaska State Fair’s turn their head.

Deana Stout of the Southeast Alaska State Fair says that their board is open to admissions.

Deana Stout: “We had people that wanted to do it, but we hadn’t set up any class for it or anything, we were just going to put it in crops and veggies…We are going to try to do that next year.” 

For Hanson, the move to enter his marijuana plant in the fair was a natural extension of his journey as a gentleman farmer.

Ethan Hanson: “I was in 4H when I was a kid.  I raised pigs and sheep and stuff like that.  Now I’m an agriculturalist.”

As for moving his contender up a class to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, which hasn’t accepted any entries yet for its agricultural exhibits, Hanson advises that he won’t be making a play for Matanuska Blue silk as it is, “too far to drive.”

Story as aired on KSRM News:
http://www.radiokenai.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Dorene-on-Purple.mp3