So on Tuesday, August 28th, after a previous day spent hitching goats to the back of my Landcruiser for a good washing, we (Jaeger, Eli, and I) loaded up all four of our French Alpine dairy does, along with all their accoutrement for feeding and milking, and headed 100 miles south to the Oregon State Fair.
We opted to stay in the dorms rather than camping because, Helloooo, we camp at home. Our days started at 6:00 with stripping the previous day's bedding out of the pens and replacing it with fresh, milking three of the does, feeding, and making sure our county's goat area was clean.
After the requisite flagpole meeting and announcements, the kids and I would gather our breakfast food and head to the deserted garden area of the fairgrounds. After our quiet breakfast time, the days were filled with herdsmanship duty in the barn, getting the goats all pimped out for showmanship, and taking in the sights of the fair as time allowed. Eli discovered a rock-climbing area with two nice 14-foot boulders and spent every free moment blowing off steam and intimidating other climbers with his monkey-tude.
Roni and Keegan came down for the day Wednesday when Jaeger had 4-H rabbit showmanship. It was a tough show, but J. held her own, and Keegan was stoked to partake in the sights, sounds, and especially foods, of the fair.
Then Mark, who had said he would try to get off work early on Friday and join us for the weekend, surprised us all by taking the entire day off and arriving by 8:30 a.m. Friday morning so he was there to see the kids show, and being male, he was allowed in the boys' dorm area so Eli had someone to help him get dressed in his white show clothes, gel his hair, and generally assist with whatever the manly equivalent of primping is. The arrival of my guy also heralded a couple of lovely evenings sitting on the quiet wine patio overlooking the Bocce courts. My kind of fair activities.
I always develop severe animal lust at the county fair, and at state, with so many more species and varieties to see, I went completely batshit crazy.
I mooned and crooned over the tiny piglets and the brand-new lambs.
And I developed a serious crush on a certain llama--just my luck, he's a gelding--but check him out, he's a hottie. Where I completely lost my senses was in the rabbit barn. I fell head over heels in love with first, a tiny gray Holland Lop being shown in 4-H, and then with the huge French Lops.
This obsession has followed me home, and I've spent the last week bombarding Mark with email pics of French Lops and links to web pages describing how ideally suited they are to be house pets. In the evenings, I snuggle up to My Man and whisper seductively in his ear devout promises to duct tape all the electrical cords to the floor so our future baby can't gnaw them to bits.
But enough about me. We went to the fair for the kids, and the kids rocked. They had no expectations of placing in showmanship being up against the best intermediate level showmen from all over the state, they went to gain experience and confidence, and they achieved that beyond our highest hopes. They were quick to grasp how much higher the standards were at the state level, and with no real prodding from me, were busily studying and quizzing each other before the show, and took all of their goats to the animal washing area where they got them cleaner than they'd ever been in their little goat lives, including scrubbing and brushing their hooves to a high shine and wrapping them in vet tape until right before they entered the show ring.
Once in the ring, Eli and Jaeger held their own with the best in the state, placing 7th and 8th, respectively, in a class of 11. They each did at least one maneuver incorrectly which probably cost them a place, but they learned so much being out there in the ring for AN HOUR AND A HALF with a judge who put them through their paces like they've never experienced. At the county level they're in the show ring for maybe 20 minutes.
The day after showmanship was judging of the animals themselves, and our 4 year-old doe, Gracie, who won Best in Show at County Fair, won Best of Breed at State. And Gracie and her daughter, Magic--Jaeger's dry yearling doe, won Best Alpine Dam & Daughter. And again, just being out there in the ring with the goats, as well as the best 4-H showmen in the state, was awesome experience for both Jaeger and Eli.
At the county level there are different 4-H clubs, and we of Aardvark Farm are our own goat club. But at the state level, all the kids from a county form a club together, and the clubs are judged daily on herdsmanship. Herdsmanship entails the cleanliness of your animals' pens, the freshness of their water, how clean you keep the aisles and areas the public sees, the friendliness of the club members, and even how organized your tack area is. Our Columbia County Dairy Goat kids, Eli, Jaeger, and four other kids, won the Herdsmanship Champion award in the dairy goat area. Very cool, nice big purple ribbons.
On Saturday night, after all the showing is over, the 4-Hers fence off part of the barn and have a dance. Our kids got out there and danced, but for Eli there's a mandatory watching and waiting period before he feels comfortable dancing. Upon his arrival from the climbing area to the dance, half a dozen girls from our county rushed at him, intent on dragging him out onto the dance floor. Like a spooked deer, Eli turned tail and vaulted right over the fence, seeking refuge with the card-playing older teens in sheep 4-H until he felt it was safe to sneak back into the dance area. But once he got the lay of the land, he was spotted slow-dancing with an extremely adorable fellow dairy goat showperson from our county. Also worth noting, Jaeger (who looks much older than her almost-13 years) danced with two boys who were not Eli. So there.
Other impressive sights of the fair included a stunning wall-hanging quilt a woman had made for her daughter. The pictures I have don't come close to doing it justice. The mother had asked her twentysomething daughter to make a list of her favorite books, limited to 124 titles. Then Mom created this gorgeous quilt designed to look like a bookshelf containing all the books on the list, with framed photos of the girl and her family scattered amongst the books. The colors are vibrant and vivid, and I found among the book titles many of my own faves--daughter was a women's studies grad, so lots of heavy-hitter female authors, but the thing that actually caused me to tear up was what the love contained in the quilt. It was almost palpable, and no one I saw approach it was able to just walk by, or to walk away quickly. It was one of the most powerful representations of love made manifest in craft that I've ever seen. Truly moving.
The 720 pound pumpkin was cool, too. I tried to imagine what it would be like to grow vegetables the size of Volkswagens. Surreal. I definitely want to try it next year, but when I try to grow pumpkins in my garden they never do much. It's the following spring when the pumpkin I threw on the compost pile in the fall, volunteers as a new plant in the compost--then I get some kick-ass pumpkins. Next year I'll just plant straight in the compost....or maybe I'll just snag a huge pumpkin from a pumpkin patch this Halloween, take it straight home and put it on the compost pile.
All in all, it was an exhausting adventure, but so full of moments of incredible pride in our kids that I can't imagine anywhere I would rather have been for that week. Jaeger and Eli worked so hard, were a great team together, rooted for each other, helped out the other kids any way they could, and kept everything in perfect perspective all week. So yeah, grueling as it was, I guess I'll do it again next year...but we'll be staying in the campground where nobody will notice my stash of vino and I don't have to sneak out to kiss Mark good-night!
No comments:
Post a Comment