Pork-out contest coming to Harrod

 HARROD - After 20 years of festivals, it would be easy to assume the people who put on the annual Pork Rind Festival would be out of new ideas. You would be assuming wrong.

With a month to go until the annual Pork Rind Heritage Festival, organizers met Wednesday to announce a lineup for this year's event that includes a pork rind eating contest sponsored by the same group that hosts the famed Nathan's Hotdog contest every July 4.

The festival's sponsor, Rudolph Foods, has partnered with Major League Eaters, which is inviting its world-class eating competitors to participate in the event. The winners of the pork rind eating contest will win the title of world pork rind eating champion as well as cash prizes.

Organizers say they don't know yet what eaters will be coming to town, but are hoping for some big names - at least big names for the competitive eating world.

"We've become fairly well known and a lot of it is because of the pork rinds. That's the big thing for us," said Suzanne Archer, one of the event's founding organizers.

The festival will run June 12-13 in downtown Harrod. In addition to the eating competition, the weekend will include live music, games, rides and the event's second most famous feature, Bessie Bingo - a contest in which a cow roams across a giant Bingo board as participants fill out their cards based on where the cow evacuates.

"That can go anywhere from a minute to an hour or more, depends on how the cow's doing," said the group's other founding member, Bill Gossard.

The festival has grown in popularity over its two decades. Gossard said he expects to see visitors from across the state and as far away as Toronto, Canada. But more importantly, the event is a chance for the 500 or so residents of Harrod to show off what they have to offer.

"I think the festival has been a catalyst for the whole town. It just shows the progressive attitude the whole village has," Gossard said.

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