Rabbit girls

Harper and Saige have been showing rabbits for about 3 years now. They have learned a lot, gotten better about knowing what to do, and have had to sort of learn as Baptism by fire, since I am one of the poultry and rabbit superintendents and have to help run the show and be the person who records stuff for the judges.  They have to be independent   They have met every challenge and I am so proud of them. 

They started the morning with showmanship. The kids are required to learn anatomy and gestation, they have to be able to answer questions  about body types, rabbit classes, colors in their own breed, and potential rabbit diseases.  They need to know a little about feeding and  husbandry. They also have to be able to successfully handle their animal, checking teeth, sexing, counting toes and looking for blemishes. I am 100% convinced that this is the most important part of any of these livestock projects.  You should know stuff about your project.  You should be able to talk about the care and work that goes into having an animal. You should feel comfortable talking to a judge, you should be able to handle the thing you have brought. I will push for kids to participate in showmanship all day long.  It also happens to be incredibly out of my youngest 2 daughters comfort zone. They do not love it.  I do not know if they see the value of what they are learning.  And that’s ok. Someday they will realize what they have accomplished.  In the mean time, I will push them to do it!  And they did amazing today!  The cool part of working the shows is that I get a front row seat to their answers.  And they did great!  Did they know every single thing?  No!  But they did a pretty impressive job and Harper only missed a perfect score by a few points.  Saige was up there as well!  

They were the reserve champions today - Saige was reserve champion rabbit showman for intermediates.  Harper was reserve champion senior showman.  One heck of a proud mom here!  

The girls each had an otter colored mini Rex to show - Harper had a senior buck and Saige had a senior doe.  Both the rabbits received blue ribbons.  The project was a bit of a bust this year- they only had one litter and the mother didn’t take care of them.  We are seriously considering switching breeds, but are still working out the ideas and details on that due to Saige literally loving every single breed and wanting to own them all!  

Harper had to leave the shows and go straight to band camp.  I honestly feel sorry for her - it’s hot out there and she has been going nonstop for a couple of weeks now.  Next week- we can rest! 

 

Goat show day

Yesterday, before we left the fairgrounds, Saige and I washed and trimmed all the goats.  The goal -make life easier since the goat show was so early this morning.  When we arrived, we quickly realized that our goal was not going to happen, as the goats seemed to have diarrhea overnight and it was a mess! 

New baths taken and hung up to dry in the early morning sun.  

Evelyn has a baby goat of her own - Black Star.  I’m not sure why, but Black Star is wild.  As in knock you flat and keep on running wild.  We bought a goat for Wrenley this spring.  Wrenley wasn’t using it to show (she’s a little young yet) so we let Evelyn “borrow” the goat.  Evie only today realized the goat was never given a name.  She announced that the goat shall be called “McKenzie” which for some reason absolutely cracks me up.  

My goat showing crew is getting smaller and smaller!  They may be small, but they are mighty.  

I am seriously proud of these girls.  Evelyn marched in there are commanded a goat that is barely green broke. She answered the questions, placed her goat and looked like she had been showing for years.  

Saige got a blue in showmanship and a blue (3rd overall) in the lightweight market class.  

Harper’s goat was reserve champion lightweight market goat. 

Showing goats is out of Harper’s comfort zone. I am so proud of her for doing it anyway.  

Saige did an amazing job as well. These particular goats are sweet - as in let you pet them and play with them all you want. But we didn’t do a very good of training them to walk well.  The girls realize this, and I think it will be a bigger priority in the future.  

Overall, a great day in the goat barn!  

Thanks to our fan club for coming to watch- especially to Cameron who drove down from KC.  He said he enjoyed telling his clients he was going to a goat show.  And subsequently explaining what a goat show is.   

The judge today told the kids that they are the future of agriculture.  I agree wholeheartedly.  And it is critical that someone is willing to step into the future of agriculture.  I cannot emphasize it enough.  At the  very least, people need to know where their food comes from.  I am proud of my kids for being willing to do the work, promote the products and actually be the future of ag!  

 

Fair?

 We went from wedding to fair so fast it made my head swim.  We were not really ready, but fairs have hard deadlines and dates that don’t care about my readiness.  

Decisions were made in exhaustion, that have never been made before in this house.  No cooking was done.  No posters were made. No photos were mounted.  There are only 2 4-H kids left at home.  We have 2 rabbits, 2 goats and 4 flowers entered.  And that’s all.  We also took a goat to the fair for Evie to show.  It took about 2 minutes to get everything entered. It was unusually easy and surreal after many years of entering things in every category and building.  Not only that, but the girls are perfectly capable of doing most of the work themselves.  My fair life is easy street now. Sort of.  I am still the co-superintendent of the poultry and rabbit barn, and have to do all the entries, run  shows and take care of judges, as well as making sure the barn is kept clean and nobody is doing any damage.  But compared to even 2 or 3 years ago- so much easier it’s crazy!  

The goats both made weight.  Harper’s weighed 50 pounds which is the minimum weight for the sale.  A little close for comfort but she got it done.  Saige’s goat weighed 57.  Not the weight as needed or wanted but at least it isn’t a bust for the sake of running it through the sale.  

Harper got 2 blue ribbons on her cut flowers.  Did we cut them at Mallory’s house on our way to town?  Why yes we did.  Do I feel bad about it?  Absolutely not.  Do you know how often we help Mallory with stuff?  It’s like an extension of our own house or something.  Saige got a blue and a white. Perhaps we should have looked a bit harder for a different kind of flower or something.  Oh well. 

In addition to the fair, this is also band camp week for Harper for the practice for the parade.  I know she has to be exhausted - as we all are, but nobody else is practicing marching for 4 hours a day.  I guess it is character building or something.  

And more - because i am on a roll

Some of these might be repeats, but I will always love candid photos.  I know people hate them - hell when they are of me, I sort of hate them too because I always look like I am mad, or have my eyes weird or my mouth hanging open or something.  I still love them anyway.  Showing people living in the moment.  

Sunny -  Preston' s girlfriend.  We really think she is a great girl and we enjoy when she comes around with Preston.  We can tell he is pretty crazy about her.  She is sweet, and funny, and polite and we like her coming to family things and hanging out with us.  She reminds me a lot of Spencer - they tend to take care of my boys.  Quietly making sure they are safe, and taken care of.  As a mom, I appreciate this more than they will probably ever know. 

Mother/son dance is an emotional roller coaster.  I love my son.  He was an absolute joy to raise.  He was that kid who had a million friends always crashing our house, was always building something crazy, broke all the house rules, but never got in trouble because he was always so dang honest about it, scared us because he likes speed and adrenaline, kept us running to sporting events,  and when he was a baby, I remember sometimes going to pick him up and hug him because he was always so happy, that sometimes we almost forgot he was there.  As long as his belly was full, he was happy as he could be.  He really made parenting easy.  I miss having him at home because he is also my kid who loved to do outside work.  He was always happy to clean the garage, or mow the yard, or weed wack or work on a car.  He has a heart for working and staying busy.  I love the man he has grown into, and I am forever thankful that he is my son. 

I also love the woman he married.  Spencer is all the things that Colin needs for balance.  She is driven, and works hard, she definitely can keep up with all his craziness.  She also makes sure he does things correctly and safely.  She is sweet, and smart and funny and works side by side with my son to build a life together.  I think they are going to be very happy for a lifetime.   

Spencer was excited about their photo booth.  I have to admit, it is not something I would have thought to do at a reception, but it was so much fun.  My "girl cousin" photo.  A lot of family drove in for this wedding, and I was so happy to see them all!  

Did you ever watch the movie "Dirty Dancing" with Patrick Swayze?  If you haven't, you need to rectify that immediately!  Best movie!  At the end, when Patrick Swayze dances with Baby - and she runs across the room and flies at him and he catches her.....most iconic scene ever!  My boys, my nephews and Travis tend to try to reenact that at every single wedding they go to.  Is it safe?  Nope.  Is it hilarious?  Yes!  These photos may be hard to tell what is going on, but it is Colin - who stripped off his shirt for this event, and Gavin catching him.  I think it is nice that Cameron, Travis and Preston were spotting him, so he didn't get a concussion on his wedding night!  

Colin's new father-in-law did tell me that when he took his shirt off, and then went to adjust his pants, he thought for a minute Colin was going to go naked and panicked a little bit!  He kept his pants on thankfully!  I am not sure that he stuck the landing, but he didn't hit his head or get hurt so that is a good thing!  I bet the next time that DJ gets asked to play "I had the time of my life" he says no!  

We all had a great time dancing the night away and using the photo booth!  

Cameron did a great job on the Best Man speech!  It was funny and touching.  

 

It was an amazing weekend.  I loved every minute of celebrating Colin and Spencer.  

That being said, I am also a 3 day traveler.  I spent 4 days in Wichita trying to help where I could, attending things and being around people.  If you know me, you know that even though I was having a great time, about day 2 I am ready to go home.  By day 3 I am antsy.  For me, there really just is no place like home.  We stopped by Colin's house to drop some things off and then hit the road.  I was excited to get here!  We got the car unloaded, stepped inside the house, and got hit in the face with what seemed to smell like dragon breath, mixed with dead poop, and a little bit of something I can only describe as what the hell.  It smelled awful!  Quincy said that we had forgotten to take the trash out and Ollie had shredded it everywhere after the neighbors put them in for the night.  Needless to say, she had to do some clean up, which I appreciate, but the smell was still bad!  We managed to get it stomped down a little bit, and I decided it would help if I went out and got some more basil from the garden and dried it.....basil will make the house smell better!  So I put on my shoes, and trudged out to the garden.  I found that being gone for several days, I had more than just basil to grab.  I had shirt being used as a bucket - and had a bunch of stuff balanced in there.  I headed over to check to see if there were cucumbers I could cut up for our dinner.  And that is when things got a little crazy!

Maude might have actually saved me from a catastrophe!  See, we have border collies - they poop in one spot in the back of the house - they hardly ever poop anywhere else.  And Carlos - his poop is tiny and he also tends to poop in the back yard.  But Maude - she poops everywhere!  She is doing a bit better on potty training, so as long as she poops outside - I don't care where she goes!  I am not trying to train her to poop in a certain location.  But because she poops everywhere, I tend to walk with my head down, watching my step.  As I headed over to the cucumber area, I thought  - ohh step around that pile!  

Only to realize that it was NOT DOG POOP!

I quickly backed up a few steps!  Because that was....

A small copperhead!  It is a good thing I was watching my step because it was literally right in my path!  I do not like to kill things, but copperheads generally would be an exception.  I did not kill this one however, because I didn't have anything on me to kill him with, and I had my whole shirt full of vegetables and basil!  I did call Saige out, because she had been wanting to see a live one.  She actually took the bottom photo with her new phone camera - which is so much better than mine!  He is still out there, so we will definitely be stepping a little lighter!  Interestingly, as we were coming up the road on the way home, someone had killed a fairly large rattle snake.  I mentioned to Jim that I had not really seen any venomous snakes this summer, which is unusual where we live.  Guess I should go buy me a lottery ticket today!