The Fair, Day 1.

The County Fair, AKA, The Fair.
Am I becoming a native?
Does the happenings at The Fair cease to be strange and intriguing?
Why does "spell check " seldomly work on blogspot?
Evidently, bad question. We lost power again for about an hour, in another terrific wind. Just as Huz arrived back home from returning the borrowed generator. So thankful to have that modern,'lectric back again!
Fortunately, Fair week had the typical weather, with blazing heat, but no tornadoes or camper-rocking windstorms.
Saturday pre-fair week is our day to move in with the camper. We rent- usually a "GreyWolf" and this year it was the same set up inside with a few extra feet...making our turning radius even more ridiculous than usual. Middlest and I must've felt we had extra weekend time, because she elected to go to the Pony Club rating that morning. To be fair, there is only one day in the spring, and one day in the fall, and she didn't want to wait until fall, so I said we'd make it happen. So, we did, leaving Huz to petition a buddy with a truck to accompany him to the camper rental office.  Middlest successfully accomplished all sections in the D2 rating, and was awarded that level. We arrived home early afternoon to the camper parked in the garden. Eldest had already done a bang-up job of loading the camper, so a few more bits and pieces, and Huz and I were off! To The Fair, me having to follow, because my truck is rigged for the electric on my trailer and the camper has one brake light and the turn signals both go on the left signal. It's subtle, but the right is very faint.  Good enough to drive back from Kentucky at night. At least that's what I told myself when I purchased the trailer in Lexington....but that's another story.
Sunday is the official "Move In Day" for The Fair. This means all your animals must be in place by midnight on Sunday night. Moving animals in the heat of the day is unneccesarily stressful, and so most critters come in between 9pm and midnight. We certainly wanted to avoid this crush, as with my big long rig, I didn't want to have to negotiate backwards through piggelty-wigglety vehicles in the dark. So, we planned to come in with the hogs early in the morning, by nine, and then travel over with the sheep and the poultry (two pens of Australorp chickens and one pen of Buff ducks) by noon.
I showed off my "skillz" backing those hogs right up to the gate... after it took a good 40 minutes to convince Willis to go on the trailer. What finally swayed him was my scratching him behind his ears, all the way up the improvised(mulch with a piece of plywood over top) ramp. My formal designation as "ornamental" since my crash, (girl meets wall), has meant I've got fingernails. The first since, maybe my pregancy with Middlest?( this is my guess since with Youngest I was renovating a house in Oklahoma and then moved in month two? and renovated a house in Ohio for the rest of preganancy. We had knocked out walls when I delivered Youngest.  Sledgehammers and ornamental fingernails are not co-habitive).  And the hogs are appreciative of my decor. Huz seems appreciative of my scratching his back too....not that I should compare him to the hogs.

 Sunday night is the designated "Fun Contest". Clubs get together teams of 6. Our club, of 81 members, fielded 3 teams.....fully 1/3 of all the participants. In this photo, I think the boy in red, and the boy in yellow are the only non- Saddle and Sirloin competitors.

 The tug-o-war. Largely Saddle and Sirloin versus Saddle and Sirloin. Saddle and Sirloin won!

 For me, and likely even for Middlest, this was the coolest thing that happened at The Fair this year. ( And a lot of cool things happened to her at The Fair this year.)See, Middlest's birthday always falls somewhere either in last minute Fair prep, or during The Fair. Thus, her birthday gets swallowed into everything else. For a country kid, it is similar to having a Christmas birthday. But this year waaaay cooooool....she got flamingoed! The first day of the fair was her 14th birthday, and we woke in the morning to a camper-yard full of flamingoes, 46? in all, each one cut out by hand and individually painted. It was the best!!! I know I thought it was so kind of someone to go out of their way to show Middlest they find her to be truly special.On the last night of the fair, while we were sitting just yards away, they mysteriously disappeared again- leaving one behind for a memory. (Its the swirly one on the far left of the photo).


Monday at The Fair has traditionally found me at the horse arena, which is about as far as you can get from the barns and still be on the grounds. This year, although Middlest did a horse project, we did not bring any horses with us to The Fair. May I say, it was a bit wonderful- horses are a lot of work, and when they are closed up in a 10x10 box all day and night, it just isn't "fair". So, we walk them, and ride them and graze them and bathe them for coolness- altogether spending a lot of time. So, without horses, this year I got to see and participate in "Weigh-in". This is the process by which all the market animals are weighed. This has two purposes. When they leave on the truck for the "packer", the packer knows how much each animal weighs, and pays the "producer"( read "4-H kid")  for that particular animal. Also, in order to show your animal at The Fair, it has to "make weight". This means that for many of the shows, the market species must be within a certain weight range to be shown. If it is too light or too heavy, you may not show them. This can be a real disappointment for a kid, so weigh in day can be a bit heavy. ( Was that funny?)

 In the photo above, a turkey is being weighed. The largest that day? 46lbs. That's one big roaster!

This is Middlest (in the red stripes) who has led February(her lamb) into the scales and then stepped out. They are watching him look around for her while the officials over on the right of the photo read the scale reading and write down his weight. Febbie needed to be over 90 lbs, and he weighed in at 106. This put him in the lightest weight class for the show. The maximum weight was 140 lbs.

 Wilber and Willis wait for their turn at the scales. Or rather, I wait somewhat trepidatiously for our turn at the scales. See, Youngest was tied up showing his dogs in the Grange building, and thus the weighing of the hogs was left to me. I was not confident that I could get two hogs to go where I wished them to go. So lacking in confidence that I asked a teen boy that appeared hog-savvy to take charge of one of the oinkers. Sure enough our turn came and amidst squeals and the clanging of gates, the hogs, a helpful fellow and I made it to the scales. They had to be more than 220lbs and less than 280 lbs. They weighed in at 245lbs and 255 lbs. Youngest did well!

 This is Youngest showing Julia in Dog Obedience. I was confident that it would be disastrous. Julia is very sweet, and willing, but the boy didn't put much time in on training, and part of his Obedience class had to be done in an open arena without a leash, surrounded by spectators. Luckiest darn kid, ever. Julia was a marvel of concentration and patience. She did all her off lead work amazingly well. Like she had been trained. In fact, right up until the last requirement the pair had lost only 17 of 230 pts. That is an astonishingly high score. But a confused Julia did not know the hand signal for "recall", and they lost 20 points in the last section. Still, they scored quite well, and I was proud of our new blackdog, and Youngest's blithe surety that it would be just dandy.

Tucker, on the other hand, has been through the arena a couple times, and even earned an "Outstanding Exhibitor" award at the Ohio State Fair last year with Youngest as handler. Even so, I was even more confident that this would be a great spectator sport. Because of his having shown before, they were to show in the Novice Class, and most of the movements would be done off leash. Sure enough, Tucker did fantastically well on the heeling on lead, and the figure 8 on lead. He was a star for the "Stand for Exam", which was off lead. But when it came to Youngest walking around the room, Tucker, leash-free and supposed to "heel", Tuck decided he was done and came to find me. Oops.

The Boss, having a half tea/half lemonade. Watchin' the dog show.

Youngest and Tucker in the "long down" portion, which is 3 minutes. Tucker was a champ, Youngest lost focus ( and the only two points taken from the pair in the last 60 points) by looking around at the crowd, checking his pockets, counting his money, doing a few spins....

For the awards, the trio wait patiently.

Although Julia scored higher, the competition was greater, and they earned third. Tucker and Youngest, though, brought home the blue- despite having heeling issues.

After the dog show? Line up for the parade in the heat! The parade ends with the King and Queen contest. Our large club was fortunate enought to field two candidates for Queen this year. The candidates ride on a car, or the back of a truck, and their club marches alongside.

Our club, when not packed together, take up a lot of space!

I could only get about half our marchers in the photo.

 During the contest, while the judges deliberated, we were so pleased to have one of our club members receive the highest honor given to a male 4-H member. The Service award, given to Evan F.! Congratulations!!!

Also during the King and Queen contest, the fair booths are judged. Our creative and awesome booth, done by the Fair booth committee (co-chaired by Middlest) was a Fairytale theme. The given title they had to work with was "Sew it, Grow it, Show it".  They split it into three sections, with a "Sew it like Cinderella" (the pink dress being assembled by the birds and mice), "Grow it like Jack and the Beanstalk" ( the 3-D green stem growing into the clouds- boot and leg at the top) and "Show it like a true 4-H'er!" ( the clovers and the projects) In the middle, they had made a large book, with the posters from all 100+ projects inside. I loved the booth and thought they did an exciting job!  Alas, as usual, the club booth was skipped over for any recognition.

Now, nearing the day after Middlest's birthday, all barn chores and showing done for the day, we could get down to birthday dinner and presents and birthday pie....

Friends came through and helped celebrate, in fact a whole county seemed to be around for Middlest's birthday!

My Beautiful Birthday Girl!

And Day 1 of The Fair was put to bed.

But, for those of you who don't get to go to The County Fair, just another taste of what you are missing.

Yes, that is a large, barefoot, smoking woman in a muu-muu, being led around by a monkey.

Ahh, The Fair!