Fair week in Grant County!!

 So my internship is slowly coming to an end! I only have two more weeks! These past two weeks has been a lot of preparing for The Grant County Fair. We have been getting ribbons, plaques, and banners set out for the shows, creating our books for the shows, and getting the barn ready for the shows.  As someone who grew up basically living at the fair in Pendleton County, I have been trying really hard not to say “well at Pendleton fair we do…”, but there are many differences between the fairs.  I told Lamar, my supervisor, that if I do accidentally say that, it’s not me comparing and saying Pendleton’s fair is better, just met explaining to him the way that I have been taught it Pendleton.  Their fair is very new to me, but one advantage that I have is that most of our work this week has been with the livestock shows and I grew up showing livestock so I know a little more about how the shows work.   

Before I talk about all the fair activities, which did take up most of my past two weeks, I did attend a Grant County Champions Coalition meeting with Lamar on Thursday July 25.  This was an open community meeting.  They are planning on having a community forum to talk about the heroin problem in the county.  Heroin is not the only drug problem in the county, but like many other small counties when there isn’t a lot to do people often turn to drugs.  Lamar and Patty Poor, the FCS agent, both attended this meeting because they think it’s important for the community to know that they support the Champions and a drug free community.  This meeting was very interesting; there are a lot of great people in the county that want to significantly reduce the drug use in the county.

No onto fair madness!  The Grant County fair started July 27, but my sister got married that day and I did not make it to the fair that day.  The Sunday after the wedding was fair entry day.  We had a lot of really great entries for the fair! Their County has 4-H entries, FCS entries, FCCLA entries, and a farmers market entries (for their produce).  The 4-H entries looked really great!

Besides taking 4-H entries, I have really only spend most of my time in the barn.  All of their livestock shows  are open shows, so there are Grant County 4-Hers and open participants at these shows.  Monday night was their cloverbud /novice show.  They have all types livestock at their cloverbud show, including country hams.  In Grant County, cloverbud are allowed to participate in their country ham projects!  There were many great participants at the cloverbud show. 

The following night was the market goat show.  There were many goat entries at this show.  The show took almost four hours!  The next day was a really long day! There was the swine show in the morning and the dairy goat show in the evening.  I didn’t leave the fairgrounds until pretty late at night and then turned around the next morning for the dairy cattle show.   That night was the sheep show. Needless to say, it was a long two days.  I was thankful that there was no early show Friday morning because I got to sleep in a little! 

These were some pictures that were taken during the week.   The picture below is Lamar wrestling a lamb.... One of the more wild ones sheep got lose, he grabbed after it, and it took him to the ground! He had a a few scrapes and bruises the next day!

All the shows have gone pretty well.  I have gotten experience in book keeping, preparing the ribbons, working the registration, announcing, and even dealing with problems that came up.  It has really been a week filled with learning! There is a lot of hard work that goes into making a fair happen.

 Something that I really liked about their fair was all the participants, cloverbuds included, got tshirts to wear the night of the show.  The cloverbud children got blue tie dyed shirts that said said Cloverbud Fun with a clover on it, the 4-H aged youth got shirts that said "exhibitor".  All participants also got shirts for their livestock sale.

This is an example of their sale shirts! Chelsea (4-H Program Assistant) and I the night of the sale!

I also found this antique ribbon; this ribbon is so old, the clover isn't even the same!

I had a really good, but tiring week at my first Grant County Fair! This was also Lamar's first county fair as the agent and I think he did a really good job! I am really sad that I only have two weeks left in this internship, but I am excited that my internship runs into state fair!