We Survived the Fair!

Many of you are aware of the fact that we are guaranteed to drop off the map for several days each year for an Event known as "The Fair." This Event tends to mean that Eric & company migrate to the satellite office at the grounds for multiple days. Questions run hot and heavy - ranging from "Who snagged the donuts for the buyer's table?" to "If a sheep gets lose from the pens at the far shed and a hog gets lose from the other barn at the same time - does the same person have time to turn both of them away from the busy arena?" Okay......so the last one was a stretch but staplers, Sharpie markers and pen tags all tend to circulate fast and furious. This year, Anne found an entirely new advantage to being one of the clerks for the indoor show. As kids checked in their 4H cooking projects..it was noticed that many had baked an extra cookie, a full pan of brownies or multiple biscuits when only 3 items of each were required by the fair book. Enter pregnant lady......in fact, if it wasn't for two extra biscuits offered by one of our ever-sympathetic kids, she might have blown away in the wind (would have to be a gale-force though). Below are pictures of Wyatt, showing off his pig and the reward for his patience. Part of a family of 7 kids (the eldest sister was the biscuit lifesaver), this young man is proudly following others in the family with excellent showmanship abilities in the ring. The last picture is a little hard to describe....as you can tell from the young one that stopped playing football completely to watch. We suspect the Sheep Penning contest will return next year. Teams of 3-4 selected from the pens placed in the arena and then attempted to gather 4 sheep running lose in the area into their pen. If that wasn't hard enough, the sheep had tag numbers that could not go over 99 for the total (in other words, Sheep A wearing tag 20, B wearing 40, C wearing 5, D wearing 10). The team closest to 99 won. We went two rounds before both people and sheep got too tired and the audience hurt too much from laughing.