The 2026 Pennsylvania Farm Show has come to a close, leaving a 1,000-pound butter sculpture without a home. All that butter won’t go to waste, though: It gets recycled, but not in the way you might think.
This year’s butter sculpture, “A Toast to Our Nation’s 250th Anniversary: Inspired by Founders. Grown by Farmers,” will be deconstructed and recycled into renewable energy.
The sculpture was dismantled Sunday at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center, then transported to Reinford Farms, a dairy farm in Mifflintown. The butter will be broken down in a methane digester to create renewable energy.
“It’s the perfect example of a sustainable and cyclical operation,” Reinform Farms owner Brett Reinford said. “Our digesters provide an ideal solution for our farm and retailers to turn waste into energy.”
It takes three to four hours to break down the butter sculpture.
The butter first goes into an anaerobic digester to melt down and create methane. The farm captures the methane and runs renewable energy that produces electricity to power homes around the farm.
The American Dairy Association North East and the Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion Program, in conjunction with Reinform Farms and the Friendship Community 4-H Club of Dauphin County, dismantled the sculpture, the 35th at the Farm Show.
Reinford Farms not only converts butter into renewable energy. The 1,100-acre farm diverts about 60,000 tons of food waste from landfills each year in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Along with its two methane digesters, the farm also has 650 cows.
The sculpture celebrated America’s 250th anniversary, transporting viewers back to Philadelphia in 1776, where Benjamin Franklin and the Founding Fathers celebrated the Declaration of Independence with a toast of milk.