Fair 2008

The fair is over for another year, and it was a hectic, exhausting, fun week! Here’s some highlights:

Olivia’s first year in 4-H, and first horse show – a 2-day event. She and I also did our first overnight in the horse barn. The horse 4-H club does night patrols of the fairgrounds, so we had fun riding horses around in the middle of the night.

She came away with 8 blues and 4 reds.

And a trophy for “Tallest horse with the shortest rider.” At one point in the show the announcer asked if she was getting tired yet, climbing on and off that big horse!

She did pretty well, considering how many of their workouts were cancelled due to rain. There were some classes she’d never even seen until the day of the show, and had to just watch the senior class and figure out what she was supposed to do. Now she’s got things to work on for next year. And she’s already lobbying for a new horse, that’s just a little bit younger and a little bit faster.

We’ll have a new marketing slogan now – Sugar Creek Farm Purple Ribbon Beef! Olivia took our best 3 steers and entered a Stocker Pen of 3. She was, of course, the only “All Natural” producer. The judge took note of her 2.04-pound daily rate of gain, remarking that was real good for natural beef and gave her a purple ribbon (compared to the commodity producers who had something like a 3.8.)

Madeline earned 4 blue ribbons in the swine show.

Olivia entered Ike in the dog show this year – his 4th year of showing – and won Junior Best in Show for Obedience, and Junior Best Handler.

Ava, on the other hand, will need another year of work to become the show dog that her “brother” is! So Madeline’s got some things to work on, too.

Rafe was understandably tired of attending all these shows by the end of the week. He remarked sadly, “Nobody watches me do anything.” But then he found out that his open class broccoli entry won a Best in Show purple ribbon. That helped 🙂

Madeline, singing the National Anthem before the Leadership League (which she’s a member of) and County Council inductions. She also sang in Share-the-Fun again this year, but didn’t get picked for state fair this time around. I’ll try and get the video of her performance posted to You Tube soon – she did really awesome, but I guess just wasn’t what this particular judge was looking for.

So it’s a wrap, and the girls are already thinking ahead to next year!

4 years ago:

Rain, rain, come this way