Farming in the shade

Last week was our county fair--a very small one, as county fairs go. I suspect that fairs are a dying breed, and so we participate in several ways just to keep the powers-that-be from looking around and saying "why bother?" We pick garden veggies to enter in the vegetable competition. We enter our handmade items in the open class needlework competition. This year The Farmer entered a skein of handspun yarn. I also entered a skein of handspun yarn, a crocheted scarf, and one of my rugs. And our kids show animals through the 4H program. 4H participants spend 2-6 months (depending on the animal shown) working with their animal, caring for it daily, getting it used to being handled. This teaches them responsibility. Many of the kids form a close bond with their animals. All of the animals are sold at the end of the fair, and there are always a few tears shed as the kids help load their animals on the stock trailers to be brought to auctions or slaughterhouses. You might be tempt...

Fair week is always a blur for us. Twice daily trips to the fairgrounds to feed and check on the animals. Shows. Pizza parties (who says 4-H has to be all work?). An auction, where the kids sell their market animals. All on top of life's normal routine... Here the kids are showing off their lambs--they enter two different types of shows. One is showmanship, which has more to do with how the kids show off their lambs. The other is market class, which focuses on the quality of the lamb itself. Here's a photo of the auction--kind of a "runway" experience for country kids. Smile. Show off your animal. Hope for the best. The animals ultimately end up in "freezer camp," which the kids understand in theory going in. But Saturday morning load-out time makes theory real.

Our county fair is next week, and each lamb that is shown must be slick-sheared. Think buzz-cut. To help with efficiency for our busy shearer, we invited others to bring their lambs to our farm. What do other folks do for fun on a hot, humid summer evening? While he was here, we had the shearer do our rams. The Farmer likes to wait 'til about now to give the rams their annual shearing. Can you imagine how good it feels to get all that wool off? To avoid bringing disease from the other sheep into our barns, we shear outdoors. We need to be moderately careful about hoof rot, which we have never had and do not want! The shearer works fast, but takes time to maintain his equipment. His truck is a portable workshop. We're ever so grateful for our shearer.

Sometimes bloggers get stuck on what to write about. Occasionally, I'll see an interesting idea over at another blog and want to try it out. This is the case with "Three Word Thursday". The point is to post a photo and try to describe it in three words. Here goes... LOL! Okay. I can't do it in just 3 words. Too many things a-swirlin' around. Here are my top three choices: 1) Lovely Summer Evening 2) Fair 4H Friends and 3) One man working What do you see here? Post it below, in the comment section. If you're a blogger and have a "Three Word Thursday" post, I'd love to check it out!

I'm late in posting a wrap-up because, quite frankly, fair week did me in. Too old for all this busyness... The final "big thing" we are involved with at the fair is the market animal auction. The animals that the kids have been looking after for several months are auctioned off to the highest bidder. They go for slaughter. For meat. The kids have come to understand this basic life principle: For one to live, another must die. Now I understand that there are folks who don't eat meat. And I'm okay with that. But we choose to eat meat, and because we do, I'd like the kids to understand the whole process. (And, incidentally, I didn't invent the whole "for one to live, another must die" principle. You'll see it worked out over and over in nature. I believe it's a principle that is set in place to point us to the truth about Christ's death on our behalf. But that's fodder for another day.) In fact, I'd love it if more people unders...

Yes, I realize that Day Three was actually yesterday. I plead exhaustion--up at 5:00 a.m., out the door at 6:00 a.m., back home for 30 minutes or so in the mid-afternoon, and then home for good about 11:00 p.m.). And actually, you'll only get the first half of Day Three in this post. Stay tuned... Daughter # 3 showed in her first 4H horse show yesterday (her second show ever). She cleaned her horse up the day before and blanketed her so that she would stay tidy. She did stay clean, mostly, but we did need to do some last minute touch-up once we got to the show. Doesn't she look nice? There is a lot of waiting at horse shows, in my very limited experience. Good thing we brought chairs and food and water. Too bad we didn't bring sunblock. Oh-oh! Daughter showed in halter class: Western horsemanship: And trail class (which is like an obstacle course): Lots of fun, and they both did fabulously. We don't think the horse has ever been shown before, and daughter is a beginner,...

Yes, I know that today's photos are pixelated. I want to share pictures of my kids, but then again, I don't want to share pictures of my kids. But I wanted to show you what we dealt with today. The calf show was funny in a way. Our daughter's calf is so well behaved. Normally. He leads well. Normally. He does what she asks. Normally. But not so much today. Today he was stubborn and a big lethargic. Notice the helper to the left. There were a couple of people pushing that calf around the ring pretty much the whole time. He just didn't want to move! Despite the lack of cooperation on the calf's part, there must have been something that the judge liked. In the lightweight class, that silly stubborn calf got second place! Gotta scoot off to bed. Tomorrow starts early...

Whew! Lamb show is over, and the kids did very well. The Farmer thinks he saw the biggest smile ever on the trophy winner's face... Tomorrow is feeder calf show.

Today is the first day of the county fair! Between them, our youngest two kids will show six different animals in at least 10 different classes. In the first three days of the fair. Fairs are a dying breed. And with Michigan's deficit, fair budgets are being cut, which will quickly hasten the death of the county fair. But that's a post for another time or another blogger. I've got lunches to make.

Today was the biggest day of the fair for our family. We picked veggies and grains to enter in the veggie show (an almost extinct part of our county fair, which is in itself an endangered species). We packed along the show clothes and some lunch and headed out mid-morning. The kids had enough time before the show to weigh their lambs and wash them. We ate a quick lunch, and they changed into their show clothes. The first judging was on showmanship. Showmanship is really about how the kids handle themselves. They need to make eye contact with the judge, smile pleasantly, and answer questions intelligently, all while leading and setting up their lamb. Setting up refers to positioning the legs and body of the lamb so that it looks nice. It doesn't sound hard, but lambs often have other ideas! Both our kids did very well, but our daughter took first place in her showmanship class. Woot! After showmanship, the lambs are separated into four classes by gender and weight--light wether (cas...

Yesterday we brought all our fine art, home ec, and photography entries to the fairgrounds for the open class judging. Entries included: framed photos (some of which were first seen on this blog), braided and rag rugs, knitted socks, handspun and hand-dyed yarns, drawings and paintings. It's our family goal to keep our little county fair from passing away by reason of neglect. Today we brought the 4-H entries in. More photos, a notebook containing a marketing plan, a decorated cake, more handiwork and four lambs. Yesterday and today most of the 4-H and open class entries were judged. Tomorrow is the 4-H lamb show.  For those of you not familiar with 4-H, here's the wikipedia info.  I'll try to keep up with photos and text this week, but...