When I look back at my number of posts per month it kind of reminds me of Obama’s approval ratings. The days are rapidly getting shorter though and maybe it will get better. We had a great week at the fair last week and I have a few things to share from that but I don’t want to do it all at once. I have decided I will share parts of the fair with parts of my actual days to break things up and give me incentive to post more regularly.
I had a blog post awhile back about how I thought exhibitors should view the fair. Basically saying to do your best, have some fun and let things fall where they may. Dakota really experienced this last week. There is really great market steer competition at the fairs around the area and I knew that we had a decent steer but not a show winner. She also ended up in the heavyweight class (Homer weighed 1426) which even the winner of seldom takes overall champion. She did get a blue ribbon though and was about where we expected in her class.
In fitting and showing she again got a blue ribbon but did not make the championship round which was a bit disappointing but there are so many great showmen that it was nothing to be sad over for long. Homer was pretty decent during the week and Dakota did a great job of taking more initiative this year than in years past and that made me very happy and I am very proud of her.
Sometimes just being satisfied with how things are is the best thing for future expectations. Friday was sale day and that was her best day. Her steer sold for as much as any of the steers in the barn and she will be that much closer to affording a post high school education. Thank you to Tyson Fresh Meats for your support of her and also to the many other sale supporters who gave close to $400,000 over and above market prices to the kids in the sale. I truly believe this is a wise investment in good, hardworking kids that will be an asset to our future.
The first night in the beef barn Debby (my fair wife, not to be confused with Christine my regular wife) and I (beef superintendents) gave the kids an overview of what we expected and how the week would go. I always like to test human nature a bit and I told the kids that if they were around their friends from the other livestock barns to be careful. I told them that they may feel like they were better than the other kids but it was perfectly natural because they ARE better than the kids showing other species. It took all of 30 minutes for a mom from the sheep barn to scold me, which was exactly what I was hoping for!
One venue that I will mention quite a bit in the coming days is the VIP tent. Now, I am not sure what VIP stands for but I am pretty sure it is for Very Intoxicated People or possibly Very Inclined to Pay. The tent serves a great dinner each night and then you can watch the rodeo from there if you like. It also tends to be the after rodeo gathering place for many of the people who camp all week at the fair. It has a bar as well I have heard but I have never actually seen it.
I am not really sure how it got started but on Wednesday night we had an adult female arm wrestling tournament going for quite some time. I tried to tell the participants that I was going to Wal Mart to buy a kiddie pool and we could have mud wrestling later in the week but that somehow fell apart. Hey there is always next year!
I got surprisingly little negative email from my last blog post with the YouTube music link. I did promise to share something a bit mellower to offset that and to show that I can appreciate music from a wide range. Radney Foster is a musical genius from my perspective but has gotten little airplay over the years for some reason. The song he sings in this link is in honor of a
Today’s real environmentalist species found on the ranch is the Black necked stilt aka Himantopus mexicanus.
Today’s picture is a scene from the beef barn at the
0 comments:
Post a Comment