Memories Of Our First Fair

Josh grew up being a "fair kid": one of those lucky kids who made projects and/or raised livestock to show at the county fair every summer.  I've heard story after story of his fair days and the (mostly) great memories he has of spending a week's worth of days at the fair grounds in Eldon.  And more stories about choosing calves and hogs to train up to show and the lengthy process to get them ready.  Ever since Caleb was a wee one, we've looked forward to participating in the fair because of Josh's great memories.

Up until this year, kids had to be 4H age (fourth grade, 9) to be able to show livestock.  This year, however, the Southern Iowa Fair (Osky) created an Open Class for kids ages 5-9 (not yet having started fourth grade) to be able to show bottle goats, lambs or calves.  (Clover Kids age...but whatever you do, DON'T, I repeat DON'T refer to it as Clover Kids!  You'll get an evil eye and an earful every time that it's NOT Clover Kids! It's Open Class.  Gotcha.)  YaHoo!

Of course we were going to participate!  So we waited and waited for a bottle calf without avail.  Thankfully, all our babies were born this year healthy to healthy mamas.  And we certainly aren't going to rip a healthy baby off a healthy mama.  SO... with time a ticking, we were very timely connected with a new friend who just happened to be kidding (or whatever you call having baby goats) and willing to sell a goat or two to Caleb and Sarah Rose to raise up for the fair!  If you're reading this post, you probably already know all about the goats from previous posts.

Half of April, all of May and June and the first half of July was spent feeding, watering, walking, tending and breaking Oliver and Godwin.  It was quite the learning experience for all of us.  It was pretty fun.  Finally, Fair Week arrived and it was time to finish up all the work with finally showing the goats!

And showing the goats meant having the goats up at the fair part of the week, having people ooh and aah over them.  And having the goats at the fair part of the week meant we got to go early and stay late to chore (because I'm to thrifty to make more than one trip to town a day!).  And going early and staying late those four days meant we got to partake in all the other fun fair "stuff" to do and make new friends... or at least get to know existing friends better!

Here are just a few of the highlights (somewhat out of order, which is what you get from using two different cameras):

Getting the goats ready!  Angie, our friend who we bought the goats from, is also a pet groomer.  But at fair time, she becomes goat (and calf) groomer for those of us lucky enough to have her do it!  The muffler on Oliver's head dampens the noise of the hair dryer.  Never see a goat in an ear noise muffler thing-a-ma-jig?  Now you have!  And have a laugh from it, too!

On the way to the first day of the fair.  Both kids got dressed Monday morning in their State Fair shirts from last year in honor of it being first day of county fair this year... not knowing that the other had the same idea!  They thought it was just great that they both had the same idea!

After dropping off our projects that we entered (more on that later), we roamed the bottle/bucket barn to find our pen.

We sat through the culinary judging on Monday to see the applesauce cake I took get judged.  I think Caleb was more anxious than anyone in the whole building to see Mama's cake get judged!   He was pretty excited when it got a blue ribbon.  He was my own little cheering squad!

Pigtail contest.  Sarah lost by a quarter of an inch.  I KNEW I should have braided a little further!  She left the stage with a few tears, but a good lesson in "sometimes we win, sometimes we don't".

Notice the long sleeves and jeans.  It was cool enough all day that the kids never took the long sleeves off.  Crazy for the middle of July!  It didn't last long, because two days later we were thankful for any little breeze and looking for shade most of the day.  In this picture, the kids are delivering the first of our supplies to the fair grounds, the bedding.  Boy were they excited!

Our fair box for this year.  Pretty excited to be taking it to the pens!  It held our poop shovel, treats, feed, water buckets, collars and leashes.

Taking in a few minutes of the Hog Show.

I miss pigs.

Pony rides!  One of Sarah's dreams come true!

Josh brought the goats in Tuesday afternoon.  All day Monday and all day Tuesday up until 6:00ish, the kids and I had been by ourselves.  The kids had gotten to know the grounds pretty well and were thrilled to be able to show Daddy around.  But Daddy kept running into people he knew, so we did more talking than we did looking! 

Between our pen and our friends' pen, we spent a lot of time with the goats.

Every evening when we got home, the kids would say they missed the goats.  This is why... Sarah spent many a times sitting out in the back yard with a goat on her lap!

Chillin' in the Pavilion!
Snack time.  Or was it lunch time?  We really had no schedule other than show or contest times!  I think this was in the 3:00 neighborhood, but it was the first real food we'd eaten since breakfast!  So.... snack, late lunch, early supper.... whatever it was, the kids enjoyed eating it in the show ring!

We got dressed for the show in the car.  All duded up and ready to go.  Up to this time, Sarah had been REALLY nervous about showing her goat in the ring.  At this point, she went from being nervous to wanting to back completely out.  So I did something I NEVER do... I bribed her.  Hang on a couple of pictures and I'll show you just what I bribed her with!

Looking handsome and ready to show!

There's my little farm girl princess!
(Appropriately self named!)

We met a buddy at the fair, too.  Logan's pen was next to ours.  He's from New Sharon, so we don't know much about him other than he's a fun, super well mannered little dude!  The three of them had quite a bit of fun with each other!

Show time!  Heading to the Pavilion.

Waiting to show.  There were only three goats, which worked out perfect for Sarah.  She was very comfortable showing with Nicole and Caleb.  If there had been more kids, she probably would have panicked.

Showing!

I am SO proud of both my kids.  They were nervous and scared, but they both found their courage and did AMAZING.

All done!  And she SURVIVED!  She was pretty proud of herself!

The all got blue ribbons and a medallion.  Nicole earned Grand Champion (1st) with Ginger and Caleb earned Reserve Champion (2nd) with Oliver.  Sarah learned a little lesson that she has to answer the questions the judges ask to excel.  

Annnnnnnnnnnd...... here's the bribe!  I promised Sarah Rose that if she did a good job showing, Daddy would take her and Caleb on a carnival ride.  Josh left the tilt-a-whirl (or whatever it's called) pretty woozy.  Totally worth it though!

Blue ribbon for the applesauce cake.

Terrible picture, but a red ribbon for the cross stitch I did in my late teens.  I was very pleased, considering I didn't even think it would come close to comparing with the other ladies' work!  This is the first "big" piece I ever did and I taught myself on it.  The fabric is a little marred and the colors have majorly faded over time because I didn't frame it right away, but the judge looked at the quality of work and judged on that.  Sarah and Caleb were both hesitant to enter their projects because they were afraid of "losing", so I entered this one with theirs so we could both experience the first time together.  I think they learned a lot by watching Mama be happy with a second place.

Blue ribbon for Sarah's painted "S" that she did.  This hangs above her bed room door.

Two more art pieces of Sarah's with two more blue ribbons: the one on the left is made with tissue paper and the one on the right is an scratch art piece. 

Two pieces of art with two blue ribbons for Caleb: the one on top is a charcoal piece of a wolf howling at the full moon and the one on the bottom is a scratch art of a giraffe.

And a blue for Caleb's painted steam engine.  The picture isn't the greatest because the flash made the box shadow the same color as the steam engine.  Oh well.

And you can't go to the fair without looking at the equipment!  I love how Sarah and Caleb are in the background checking out the tractor all on their own!

A trophy and blue ribbon for winning the coloring contest, which was a surprise, too!  First of all, there were A LOT of contestants in Sarah's age group, of which she was on the younger end of the kids age-wise.  Half way through the time allotted for them to color their picture, she urgently had to go to the bathroom.  So we stopped coloring and RAN to the bathroom, which was not close!  We went as fast as we could and got back just in time to hear the judge say they only had a couple of minutes left.  Sarah had most of the main part of the picture colored, so she quickly "scribbled" (according to her) the background and fore ground.  She was pretty distraught.  She takes after her somewhat perfectionist mother.  Turns out, though..... SHE WON for her age bracket!  Again, Caleb was just thrilled for her even though he didn't win.  It's so sweet that Caleb gets so happy for others at their achievements!

Later in the week, Caleb won a blue ribbon and trophy for the cookie decorating contest.  The kids were once again divided into age groups, with Caleb being on the lower end of his group.  He started out making a green airplane, but after a minute, I looked over at him and he is near to tears because he can't make the frosting pipe into the shape of an airplane.  He happened to have a leaf tip on the end of his pastry bag and had made lines for his airplane that looked exactly like stalks of a plant.  So I simply suggested that he turn his cookie 90 degrees and make it into corn stalks and then I turned away to care for Sarah Rose.  (He does a better job when  Mama isn't giving him too much attention.)  When I looked back, he had made more corn stalks, complete with yellow tassels and silks and a red combine head going through the field.  I was pretty impressed.  And so was he when they called his name and handed him a trophy!   I don't have a picture to share because I didn't have my camera, so I took a picture with my old dinosaur flip phone to text to Josh's phone so I could get the picture from his high tech phone to our computer and now I can't get the picture I took with my phone to text to Josh's phone off Josh's phone and where it needs to go.   :-(   Gotta love technology.

A new event at the fair this year was mutton bustin'.  These are the muttons that were to be busted.

Caleb with Cousin Emmet watching and waiting for their turn at the ewes.  There were a ton of kids there!  And you could very easily split them into to groups: townies and country kids.  I'll leave it with enough being said at that.

Cousins!  I think the kids had a great time running into each other all over the fair grounds and getting to know each other better.  Top row:  Caleb, Ephraim and Emmet. Bottom row: Eden, Sarah Rose and Eliza. These are Josh's cousin's Seth and Jenny's kids.

The pen for the pony ride ponies just happened to be right beside our goat pen.  Sarah was in love all week.  Daddy says no ponies.  I say Daddy will have to be the one to break his little girl's heart.  (Which is okay, I don't want a pony!)

Cousins cruising the barn.  We're missing one; Ephraim was attending his livestock responsibilities.  I told Josh this is probably the first of many years of cousins roaming the livestock barns together!  Time flies so fast that pretty soon they'll go off without a chaperon and leave their mamas with no young'uns to attend to.  They sure do grow up fast!

And finally, a look at our little corner of the barn.  

It was a fun four days and I think we're already looking forward to next year!   We learned the ropes this year, gained some experience on how things should be done, met some new friends, met up with some old friends, learned a lot about ourselves, stepped up to challenges and a great time just being with each other.  We wished Josh could have spent more time with us, but ya gotta make hay when the sun shines!  Literally.  We were pleased with the few hours we had with him, though!

Here's to the 2014 Fair and looking forward to 2015!