Showing Goats

The Fair. (The fair?) The goats.

Jesse's goat -- Samwise

Anders' goat -- Grover

Summer's goat -- Sapphire (the only girl among our goats)

Mette's goat -- Phillip

 What do we think about them (the fair and the goats) now that it is all said and done, I wonder? 

(Said and done = fair clothes [yes, official fair clothes] and 4H patches purchased for the kids, the goats paid for, the pens made, the halters bought, the goats fed ... and watered ... [and neutered] ... and trained [walked and braced and set] ... and tagged ... and sheared ... and weighed [in the balance and found wanting? haha] ... and shown [twice per goat--market and showmanship--that's eight shows between our four kids] ... and judged ... and auctioned [each kid standing nervously in the arena with their little goat while the auctioneer rattles off numbers and ... words? ... faster than you can understand them].)

Well. 

It is quite a thing.

But a happy thing? Wholesome? Annoying? Terrible? I suppose if we made a continuum, we were generally bouncing along different points of it. And I can't necessarily say that we landed most often on the enjoyable/rewarding side. But maybe we did? Perhaps we shall just have to wait a few months and see how it has settled itself out in our memories before we decide if we will do it again. (Like natural childbirth or a marathon perhaps.)

Some unordered thoughts/moments:

-- We didn't properly understand "fair week". As in "No! Of course you can't play with a friend today! It's fair week!" and "What? Go to the library? It's fair week!" and "Everyone to bed! We have to be up early for the fair!" Mike and the kids spent the majority of three full days at the fairgrounds (I joined them with the littlest ones for most of two days) and every other day we were there at some points for feedings and getting the goats situated in their pens, etc. Luckily by the second full day I had realized what this was to be and we brought blankets and chairs and a cooler of drinks and food. (And bless Cache Valley fairgrounds for having a stream running through it and huge shade trees everywhere.) Having a central meeting spot to relax and eat and let kids wade in the stream between showings made the experience much better.

-- Near the end there was a decidedly ... beauty-pageant aspect to it all that we also hadn't understood properly when we first started this. That was the part of it that had Mike and I most often saying, "I just think maybe this isn't really our kind of thing." The clothes you have to purchase, yes, but mostly the goats! The goats have to be shaved (quite an ordeal without an expensive stand and trimmers) and the fur at the bottom of their legs is supposed to be left long and fluffed and poofed with expensive styling product (why???). People buy paint to spray on their goats warn knee pads for crying out loud and the horns have to be trimmed and sanded just so. Goodness. Too much.

-- Building pens (rather, observing Mike and the kids build pens) felt just like good, wholesome hard work.

-- Going to the farm (before we asked our landlord if we could build a pen over here to keep them closer and practice walking them more easily) to take care of the goats every day felt like a bit of an annoyance, but also, I was grateful for it. Especially during the spring months when Mike was working 100-hour-work weeks. It got us regularly outside and being at the farm is always satisfying.

-- The night we went to our future neighbor's house in the dumping rain to let our kids pick out their goats (and then to McDonald's for dinner--dashing past puddles and more rain to get safely inside) is a very cozy memory for me. 

-- The goats were maddening to train. Goats are just unbelievably stubborn. And Summer's goat reduced her to tears multiple times. But also ... very darling and happy seeing Mike and the kids out working with them in the evenings. And fun to see Mette go from terrified of the goats to confidently grabbing him and putting on a halter, etc. Fun also to see the goats go from terrified and having to be chased to be caught, to being so comfortable with the kids that they had no trouble getting ahold of and haltering them.

--The kids did better than we had hoped for the most part. Anders' and Mette's goats were the most muscley and well-built of ours in the end, so they both scored high in the market show. And they both actually did quite well in the showmanship show as well (surprising as I feared our goats would be the least well-behaved and controlled of all). Summer and Jesse's goats didn't do as well. Jesse was a bit disappointed as he had spent, by far, the most time working with his goat, and Samwise had typically been our best-behaved goat, but things went a little poorly at the fair with him. But! All my kids handled the stress and frustration of dealing with stinker goats in front of a stadium admirably well! (And, in the end, they each made a tidy sum of money--which I was also relieved about as I half worried they wouldn't even make up the original price of their goats!) (Here we are spectating. This is about when Starling said to me, "Can we never go to the fair? I'm too hot to go to the fair. If we go to the fair, can you stay home with me?" Poor dear still had a second day in store.)

--But, speaking of money, there was a fundraising side to the whole business that we also hadn't known about (and were not interested in participating in). Kids go around getting people to boost their goat price with donations or to commit so much towards buying it, etc. By the time our kids pay us back for the original cost of their goats, they will have each made a few hundred, but many of the kids literally make thousands. Yes. I said thousands. So to make the really big bucks you really need to be far more gung-ho than we could ever be.

-- Mike was the one having to help the kids get goats washed and ready and in the right place at the right time for their showings (I just went in and saved seats with Hansie and Starling) so the fair was more stress on him. But there was a strong type of community feeling being there that I enjoyed. The kids kept bumping into friends who were showing animals--pigs, sheep, goats, steers. And it honestly seemed that half of our ward was involved. Every time I'd enter the arena it seemed I was bumping into someone I knew. "Hey Mindy! Has your girl shown yet?" "Sister Glenn! Oh you are a trooper for being here for all these showings! Aren't Blakely and Marley doing pigs and sheep?" "Hey Beth! Is this the first year your grandkids are old enough to do the fair? Yes, there are a ton of people from the ward here! The Whittiers are doing pigs. Both Whittiers. And so are the Souters and Broadheads. And I know the Boudreros are doing sheep. Oh and the Smiths have cows. Who else? I'm pretty sure I'm missing some!" I even met three people who will be neighbors when we move to the farm. (Well, maybe I only met two. Technically I had met one of them before but ... forgotten. Which was a bit awkward. Ha.)

-- That community/familiarity was one of the things I really noticed the most just because of how easy this moment was to contrast with a moment from last year. So, our ward up here, for their youth camp fundraiser, does pony rides at the fair. (Such a great fundraiser!) Last year at fair time (when they sent around the sign-up sheet for the youth to take a shift giving kids rides around the arena), we had only been here for about two weeks. I didn't even know how to get to the fairgrounds. And when we arrived, it was awkward because I didn't yet recognize one person from the ward (nor they us) to know who to even walk up to to say, "Here we are. What do my kids do?" Everything was completely unfamiliar. So this year, attending that same fair without being able to walk twenty feet before seeing a familiar face, and having Penny, Jesse and Anders help with the pony rides--knowing the other kids and leaders there doing it with them--it just made me feel really grateful for roots beginning to be established, and community, and relationships, and feeling connected. It's easy to take for granted and not even notice when you've lived in the same place for fifteen years (like we had before this), but the contrast of going to the fair this week verses a year ago was so stark that it made me really appreciate what we have developed so far here. I'm really happy about living up here! (And, if we never do this again, this one time will still have been a memorable experience for the kids.)