Fair experience has changed for Scott’s Roasting owner

George Scott hopes every year that people at the Centre County Grange Encampment and Fair will salivate at the sight of his roast pork and whole hog sausage dishes.

He also looks forward to a few Grange Fair food staples such as his favorite Sunset Ice Cream, a popular vendor based in Williamsport.

“I love it,” Scott, co-owner of Scott’s Roasting, said. “I’m a big ice cream guy.”

There have been a few changes since Scott was a child, though. Now he stays almost exclusively at one of his three booths at the fair. Two sell pork roast, and the third, run by his son Jason and daughter-in-law Amanda, sells whole hog sausage. All three booths will sell about 62 pigs-worth of pork roast in a week.

“When I was a kid we had a tent, and I sort of grew up going to Grange Fair,” Scott said. “The tradition was to stay in the tent as a kid, and then when you become a teenager at Grange Fair it’s fun to run around with friends. I still have fun seeing people, but they usually have to come to me.”

The fair keeps Scott family “super busy,” so George and his wife Brenda enjoy the fair experience “a little, but we’ve got to keep things rolling.”

Scott usually wakes up at about 1 a.m. each morning on the family farm to check all of the barns, goes to the fair at about 5 a.m. and stays most of the day.

“You get a few hours of sleep, but it’s the local fair and it’s unique,” Scott said. “You have as many people staying at the fair as you do coming to visit the fair every day. You have a large lunch crowd and large evening crowd, so it’s a fair where people are always present. Other fairs, it’s a little easier getting through the week.”

If Scott had free time, he would socialize more and “make a pig of myself” seeing what other food is available.

For now, though, he’ll settle for running a stand and asking others to make food runs for him.

“We’ll send someone to different places to pick up supper, so we make it around that way and enjoy some of the other food,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get chicken, hamburgers or ice cream. If we hear something is popular, we gotta get some of that. We’re not totally out of the picture. We make our rounds.”

This story was originally published August 14, 2017 at 9:23 AM with the headline "Fair experience has changed for Scott’s Roasting owner."