County Fair 2013

Sorry this is practically a small novel and a little late but a lot has happened recently that I wanted to share with you!

Wow what a week!!!! I feel as if I could sleep for a solid week straight after the week I just had! This past week was my county fair. Now for most kids and people when it's the county fair all they are concerned with is the carnival and going up town to be with their friends. For me by the time all of that is happening I'm ready to be done with the fair. For the past 10 years (half my life!) the county fair for me has been centered around the livestock show. I show on Wednesday at either the pig or goat show or even sometimes both and then Thursday night was the premium sale. Along with livestock my sister and I being very involved with 4-H had achievement day as well where we brought all of our projects to be judged.

May not be from Indiana but every word is true!

This year however my dad and I got to help judge the projects on Sunday. We have been out of 4-H for a couple of years now and have been asked to come back as a judge. Let me tell you it's not easy being a judge!! I think i'm too nice of a person when it comes to judging. I want all the kids to do well and I hate to break their hearts when I give them a bad review. But it's still fun to get to do the asking of the questions instead of answering them. I got to judge the garden, horticulture, beekeeping, and part of the self determined categories. All the kids who exhibited this year did a wonderful job.

Tuesday afternoon was the chicken show and the beginning of the livestock shows. I was in town that afternoon and thought that I would just stop by and see how they were doing (at 3:30 pm) and say hi to my Ag teacher not really planning on staying. When i'm walking up the extension leader is there and asks if I would be willing to help out. I said sure not knowing what I was getting myself into! Well a good friend of mine and her dad were supposed to be the superintendents but her dad had to be gone for the night which left her by herself. So they asked if I would help her out and turned out I ended up becoming Co-superintendents with her!  We helped weigh the market birds, pass out ribbons, and I even got to help announce. We had a very successful night with the biggest poultry show ever with 95 birds! Since the show didn't start till a little after 6 and we had so many birds we were at the show until 9:30 that night!

The next morning bright and early was the swine show and since I wasn't showing pigs this year I decided to go and watch and maybe help out if they needed it. Turned out I got asked to announce again which landed me a permanent job. I got to announce the chicken, swine, sheep, and beef shows. Since I was showing goats I let someone else do it. It was lots of fun announcing because you get to watch the show from a ring side seat. We had a great pig show with quite a few hogs. I think they said the number was down a few from last year but still a good turn out.

The Pee Wee Class

After the pig show was over I ran home and got my goats and came back and showed them at 3. In a weeks time they each gained about 6 pounds!! This brought their totals to 99 and 98 pounds each! They were in the heavy weight purchased market class. There were 6 entries in their class and I got 3rd and 4th which is just right in the middle and nothing to be to sad about. They did good showing for the most part. The wether that I showed gets a little antsy when he stands for to long and wants to move around and rear up which is totally opposite of the other wether. Once you get him set up he just stands there and doesn't move a muscle. After the wether classes we had the showmanship class. This is probably one of my favorite classes because it doesn't matter what your goat looks like it matters on what you know about your animals and how you show. This judge asked questions which I really like because some kids don't have a clue when it comes to the animals they show. For me he asked the gestation, how much I thought he ate per day, and what I would change about my goat. I did pretty good I thought didn't really know how much they ate per day but oh well. I didn't end up getting it but still had a pretty fun day.

My first county fair and first ever goat show 

Me on the right and the girl behind me also has my other goat.

When the goat show was finished we loaded them up and took them home and I turned right around and came back for the sheep show that night. I got to announce it and we didn't end up leaving there until almost 10:30 pm. They had a nice sheep show with about 55 head if I remember right. Not to many ewes but mostly commercial lambs.

The next morning we had the cattle show which I also got to announce at. They had a decent amount of cattle there. Numbers were down some because many of the kids were away at different shows or had quit showing all together.

I had to leave the cattle show a little before it got over because I had a test I needed to retake from Monday! I went and took it Monday and the computer while I was doing it decided to shut down and do a systems update which meant I got locked out of the rest of my test! Luckily it was a proctored test so I had someone to vouch for me and the teacher reset it. So I went and took it and actually got through the rest of the test. I hope they get their computers figured out because a bunch of us have to go in to take our finals next week!

Thursday night after all of the shows are over they have a Premium Auction, which means that you "sell" your animal but get to keep it. Different businesses and people buy your animals but basically give you money for future projects, feed, or what ever you want to do with the money but you keep your animal. We also have a supper for the buyers and exhibitors and their families. My goat sold for 400 dollars which is pretty good. It was a great sale and all the prices were up from years past. I tried to buy a couple of animals because we figured that like in the past there would be new kids who wouldn't get but a couple hundred dollars. But everyone I started to bid on went way over our limit which was great but I didn't get to buy.

Even though the fair was going on this week I still had lots of homework and school stuff to worry about. I also had my nursing orientation Friday morning. We learned about our classes, stuff we needed, all the background/drug/physical tests that we had to get done before we did clinical, and got to meet some of the people that we would be spending the next year with. It is kind of exciting that we are getting close to starting but also very nerve racking of what the year will bring! All in all I'm ready to begin this class!!

Along with all of the livestock showing for the fair my beekeeping club had a booth set up on the square. I had quite a bit i had to do to help with it too. I had to get a banner, get the t-shirts ordered and picked up, and track down the guy in charge of the fair to make sure we had place to put our booth! So I've been busy last week and this week both getting all of the stuff for it lined up. I helped work the booth Saturday night. It was lots of fun and we had lots of people interested in beekeeping. It was a beautiful night and really not to hot so it was rather enjoyable!

All in all it was a great fair. Kind of sad being that it will be my last year showing but I know brighter and better things are on the horizon. Showing livestock was a wonderful way to spend my summers. I made countless friends and memories and truly had the time of my life. I encourage anyone with younger kids to get involved with 4H or FFA and to show livestock because you will not regret it ever! More on my sappy memories for a later post.