Submitted Photo Glady Jacobson stirs up another batch of fudge.

DEVILS LAKE – Glady Jacobson submitted her first entry into competition at the North Dakota State Fair last year at age 94. Her fudge netted her a blue ribbon in the open class culinary division and a $13.50 premium check.

Jacobson is aiming to repeat the feat this year at age 95. She’s already registered her entry for the State Fair that begins July 18.

A few months ago, Jacobson moved from the family farm near Warwick – the community where she grew up and raised her family – into assisted living in Devils Lake. She called her granddaughter to kindly ask if she would retrieve all of her “special” pans, recipe and ingredients from the farm. Before noon the next day she had made large pans of her delightful fudge – some with nuts, which she favors, and some without.

“She made the fudge last year, and it was so wonderful,” said her friend and State Fair Board member Connie Hanson of Devils Lake, who encouraged her to enter her fudge at the 2024 fair.

Jacobson said she obtained her recipe in 2023 from a newspaper column written by Jessie Veeder of Watford City.

“To tell you the truth, I took it to the family Christmas gathering. Nobody ate one piece,” she marveled. Her family now is likely regretting having missed out, but Jacobson wasn’t discouraged.

In her church and small town, when people became ill and she wanted to do more than pray for them, she would visit and give them a piece of fudge.

“That went over really well,” she said. “They just loved to see me come.”

Desiring to have perfectly cut pieces of fudge, she asked at the shop that had once fixed her vehicle windshield if they could make her a long Plexiglas ruler. She paid off the craftsman with fudge because he declined money and now uses the ruler to score her confectionery so it cuts beautifully once it’s set.

Jacobson said she has had a full life of cooking for her husband, four sons and a daughter.

“I’ve cooked a lot. I’ve fed the masses, my daughter says,” Jacobson said.

She said her children were involved in 4-H and exhibited at their local fair, but she was always too busy to think about entering anything herself. She finally has found the time, even though the grandmother and great-grandmother isn’t slowing down.

Along with her fudge, Jacobson is known for her purple irises and flower arrangements.

“She’s so creative,” Hanson said. “She just puts things together that are so beautiful. She’s very talented.”