County Fair

This is where we spent MUCH of our time the third week in August.

I wrote a bit about that HERE and HERE

but am just getting around to posting some other pictures.

Since this blog serves as a sort of family scrapbook,

I need to do a little catch-up, which is different than

ketchup, which some of my family consume in copious amounts. 

Yet again, I digress.

I didn't get any pictures of our big show day

because I didn't want to 

1) have my camera hanging off my neck

2) have my camera come in contact with water as I helped with washing

3) have my camera come in contact with any poo from the cows as I helped get them where they needed to be

4) take a chance on dropping, breaking, or losing it

5) lose it.

I hope my children accept these as valid reasons for not photo-documenting one of the biggest days of the year for them.

This is Linnea and one of the animals she showed.

She is about to tie it to the wash-rack and clean her up before entering the ring.

Linnea got into the blue ribbon auction with her and this was on Saturday morning.

However, this is what we did several times from Wednesday through Saturday

with all the different animals they showed.

 I didn't get a picture of the goat pens in one of the other barns

but this was our area of dairy cattle. 

Linnea is doing a stall check,

making sure everyone is clean behind them and bedded.

We had 13 head in the dairy barn;

from the left of the picture to the dark cow quite aways down the line.

Feeding, watering, and cleaning up after all of these

takes quite a bit of time but we enjoy it.

This was taken while Linnea was waiting for her turn in the auction ring on Saturday morning.

On her way out of the ring,

very happy with the amount of money she got!

Our friend and neighbor Darrell waiting near Nathaniel as he waited his turn in the ring.

When they show, there are no gates and there are groups of cattle in the arena at one time.

For the auction, it's one-at-a-time.

I think this was Nathaniel's eleventh year at the fair,

which would also make it MY eleventh year at the fair

not counting the years I showed as a child/teen.

Nathaniel in the auction ring with Natasha.

Andrew and Isaiah didn't have anything in the auction so I don't have pictures of them for this post.

It was hot, tiring, and dirty but it was a lot of fun, too.

Some may look at us and think

"WHY in the WORLD would anyone want to do THAT??"

If that's your question, I don't really know how to answer in a way that would make sense to you.

It's just one of the things our family likes to do!