Pre-Fair, Post-Fair

I was talking to a buddy today about the fair and he said that it's a lot like running a marathon.  He's right.  But it's a little more like doing a few 100-yard windsprints during a marathon, while chugging keg beer and eating a corndog.  It is, obviously, the greatest and most challenging 5 days of summer.

For 4-H and FFA kids, fair preparation is year-round.  Last year, Dylan picked out Dolores the day after the fair.  This year, we're waiting a whole week.  Dylan and Grady have been working with their fair animals all summer long.  Dylan caught her heifer, Dolores, twice a day and brushed, washed, groomed, and walked her.  Dolores had her hair professionally clipped and her hooves trimmed.  Her showbox looked like a Jersey Shore bathroom counter.  Turkeys, of course, are a lot easier and daily baths would probably kill them, but Grady was pretty good at keeping them well fed and watered.  Robot and Batman even got a good scrubbing and bath just before the fair.  You ever have to wash a turkey?  It was an all-hands on deck kind of job.

And then, voila, fair time.  Dolores had to be there a day early to get weighed and preg-checked.  When Dr. Amy pregged Dolores, her eyes widened and she said, "Any day."  So a 1528 pound, very pregnant heifer was led to her soft bed of shavings, where she'd spend the next 5 days getting washed, fed, groomed, and coddled.  Robot arrived Wednesday morning for poultry inspection (apparently, birds carry a lot of bugs).  He passed his mite test and sat on the scales at 45.8 pounds.  A tad heavy, but since Grady is still in PeeWee Showmanship and can't sell, Robot could've weighted 100 pounds and it wouldn't have mattered.

I'll skim though the next 5 days, mostly because they're a blur.  Grady showed Robot as the only PeeWee turkey showman.  And while the judge was impressed with his turkey knowledge, he was really impressed with his beast of a bird.  Dylan showed Dolores and finished a very respectable 3rd in her class, and, the following day, finished well in her market class.  Since Grady was the only kid showing a turkey, he automatically made it to the PeeWee finals on Saturday.  There, in the big showring, he marched Robot back and forth, shook the hands of random bystanders, and pointed out all the weird parts of his bird.  Dylan got back in the ring on Sunday for her final day with Dolores.  Thankfully, our awesome neighbor, Bob, bought her and promised he'd let Dylan come visit Dolores and her new baby.  That was a huge weight off Dylan's shoulders and made her goodbye a thousand times easier.

Demobilizing our fair set up made me understand why the army just dumps its tanks and helicopters into the ocean whenever it leaves a foreign war.  I wanted to do that with all our crap, but Yreka creek is dry, so I had to cart it all to the truck.  We are, still, in a bit of post-fair hangover mode.  But things are looking up.  I'm starting to miss fried pickles and 4-wheeler crashes and we're already talking about picking out next year's fair heifer.  By August 2019, we're bound to be ready.