It’s a far, far butter thing they do at the Pennsylvania Farm Show

    If you’ve given up fats or salt as one of your New Year’s resolutions, this story may be hazardous to your resolve.

    It’s about butter — a half ton of it, shaped by a sculptor into a scene celebrating milkshakes — that is a popular attraction at the Pennsylvania Farm Show now under way in Harrisburg.

    The 1,000-pound work of art features a pair of dancing cows in, ahem, “Grease” style attire, along with a few humans drinking milkshakes.

    The theme is “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” a hit song from 1954 when the farm show milkshake debuted.

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    Sculptor Jim Victor and his wife, Marie Pelton, have been working with the butter since mid-December. The right temperature is paramount when butter is your medium, Pelton said.

    The temperature inside the butter sculpture’s display case will be kept at a cool 45 degrees throughout the eight-day show.

    Once the show’s over, the butter will be donated to a Juniata County dairy farm, where it will be converted into about 65 kilowatt hours of electricity.

    The Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association serves up about 140,000 milkshakes every year at the show, which continues through Jan. 11.

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