The Fair Diaries: The End Of The Road

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Well, we made it home.

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And I have to say, this morning I am feeling a bit bittersweet. For the last decade of my life, the entire month of August has been one big fair-flavored melee. As I went I to do chores this morning, I felt the usual absence of my daughter's show steer not being there to greet me, it's always a bit of a morose thing to not be greeted by the giant floof who's given me cow-kisses every morning when I feed. I'm sure it's even worse for my daughter and all the kids who work so hard with their market animals.

But added into the post fair feels is the fact that I won't be going through this again next year.

And you know what, even though there is a bit of the whole goodbye emotions that occur when you face that a way of life is ending, I have to say there is excitement because we are all moving on to the next chapter.

Our daughter is going into her last year in high school and has aims to become a registered international travel nurse. You can't really show cattle when that's your occupational goal. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon watching her say goodbye to her steer Pumpkin and goodbye to a big part of her childhood (4-H and cattle showing) as she gets ready to transition into adulthood. There were lots of hugs.

And not everything was a sad-fest, although Sunday is the saddest day at the fair. If you look in all the market animal barns you'll see kids dealing with the fact that their animals will not being going home with them. But enough of that.

Yesterday, our last day at the fair, my daughter spent the entire morning livestock judging with her FFA chapter at an event put on by the University of Idaho. My girl ran for her chapter's president and won, so it was great watching Madame President as I like to call her, lead her team to victory. Livestock judging is quite an activity, it took them almost four hours to complete the contest against quite a bit of competition. They were awesome!

After the judging we ran around doing last day fair tasks. One of 4-H's market animal project requirements is to handwrite and deliver to the 4-H office a thank you note for your animal's buyer before you pick up your premium money.

Premium money is the cash prize the kids win for each of their ribbons on any projects they enter into the fair

Since my girl had spent all morning livestock judging, we had to whirlwind around the fairgrounds doing all that last minute project house cleaning, along with delivering all her steer showing equipment to another 4-H'er. She sold all her stuff to another kid so they could start showing without having to buy everything brand new.

At the same time, my hubs and I were getting the trailer all ready to tow home. After a week at the fair, the hubs was especially ready to vacate, and we got him out of Camper Village and back to the farm by early afternoon.

I was going to ride home with him and leave our daughter my car to follow, as she couldn't leave the fairgrounds til at least 6ish due to the steers needing to be fed and watered one last time. I could tell by the look on her face that she wanted me to stay with her, and she even relayed as much, as not only was she going to have to say goodbye to Pumpkin, but it was also her very last fair.

So I stayed. And we both went over to the bleachers at the arena and watched the rodeo as it is free on the final Sunday at the fair. That was where we experienced a bit of excitement.

I mean, rodeos are always a bit exciting, but as usual in our realm, we always seem to be where something wild occurs.

As we were watching the bull riding, I looked at the six foot high chain link fence right in front of us and chuckled a bit. I told my daughter that my Papa had bulls that could clear that fence easily, especially the absolutely insane Brahma/Angus cross bulls that he bred.

I kid you not, the next bull that left the chute was a Brangus and it came bucking over by us as soon as it dislodged the cowboy upon his back. Up on a box right next to us was this guy:

That bull came barreling up to the photographer and jumped right in his face. Six more inches in leap and he would have came completely over the fence, as it was he broke the chain link panel, knocked the very expensive camera over and launched the camera dude off the box. (He was not injured thankfully!)

There was a little toddler right below me on the bleachers running around. I had told my girl earlier that if a bull came over that she was to roll under the bleachers, and I began reaching for the toddler to take with me since his parents were more than an arm's length away and because the pickup guy missed the bull with his rope.

Thankfully the other pickup guy used his giant draft cross horse to nudge the bull away from the fence, but before they could get him roped it came barreling back again. However, pickup guy number two got the bull roped this time and I breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted to see was a bunch of imports get steam rolled by a Brangus Bull that hated videography. I kid you not, people actually moved toward the rampaging bull. Yee haw...

The rest of the rodeo passed without incident, and before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to Pumpkin. I'm not going to pretend there were no tears, he was such a wonderful boy. Truly the best steer my daughter ever had, and I am going to miss him.

But, that is the reality of life, especially homesteading life. The only thing with any permanence is that life is always changing. I am so thankful we were able to experience the fair as we did, but I am also very excited to move onto the next phase of our lives. My knees are especially so😁

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's steer slobber and strawberry lemonade encrusted iPhone.

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