What Happens To The Butter Cow After The Fair?

Now that the traffic has died down, the vendors are almost all off the grounds, and the excitement is over... I have one burning question. 

What happens to the Butter Cow sculpture after the Fair is over?  I mean, it doesn't just disappear or anything. It's a lot of butter.  That's gotta be somebody's job, right?  Why have I never thought of this before? Do they just break it off into chunks and hand it out to employees? Does someone actually eat it? Do they throw it away? Does a local restaurant buy it?  Is there a secret Butter Cow warehouse off in the county that houses ex Butter Cows?

So, Detective Behka is again on the case.  Now I kind of.... need to know.  So I called up the Fair office and asked who runs the Gerken Dairy Center during the Fair.  I couldn't find anything on the sites about it, so why not come out and ask?  The nice lady at the office told me that the person who they have as a contact is named Stacy Dohle.  A quick phone call later, I was so close to answers.  Stacy told me that every year, a couple of days after the Fair is over, they'll turn off the freezer for the Butter Cow.  Then about a day later, it gets soft enough to disassemble and put in buckets. It usually takes about 21 5 gallon buckets to get all the butter put away.  Then they... just store it and re-use it next year.  She said they can usually use it for about four years before they have to get a new.... what do you call it?  Butter supply? Maybe that's it.  Apparently it gets too hard to work with if they use it more than that.

I don't know where they keep the butter... I guess I should have asked that. It's probably in someone's Official Freezer or something.  I guess some parts of the mystery can remain.  I thought it would be so funny to have someone say to me, "Here's your toast, and your butter straight from the butter cow" but I guess that's a lost fantasy.  I guess you wouldn't want to eat the butter when someone spent all that time touching it.  Although I'm sure they're hygienic when they work with it every year.

In the end, the most practical, easy method was the right answer to my question. Seems so Missouri, doesn't it?  Keep It Simple, Stupid. Just put it away in a bucket and have done with it.  Anyway, thanks Stacy, for letting me know the scoop (of butter).

Butteringly yours,
Behka