You know I love a fair!

Of course, you know I would end up arriving here right in time for fair season!  Last week, was the Stillwater County Fair, this week is the Carbon County Fair and next week starts Montana Fair.  I've been visiting them with Jeannie and the girls and have learned a lot about sheep showing/judging.

Friday night, we traveled back to the fairgrounds for their county's fair fundraiser, The Pig Wrestling Contest! I have to  admit, this might have been one of the coolest fundraisers I've seen at a fair.  The contest is broken into different age brackets starting with PeeWee (little kids) and right on up to the adults!  There's bragging rights at stake as well as cash prizes.  All of the entry fees go back to the teams competing as cash prizes.  The fundraiser part comes during the calcutta for the teams.  Each team is auctioned off and 50% of the proceeds from the calcutta goes to the Fair/4H.  The other 50% is split between the buyers of the 1st, 2nd & 3rd place teams.  Some of those teams sold for $300-$400 dollars!  

 The size of the pigs varies by age group and the teams have to put the pigs into a barrel tail first.  The pigs have been coated in bentonite clay so they're pretty slick and the ring is full of wet, slick mud!  Suffice to say that if you are involved, you're probably gonna come out covered in clay!
 The local fire department (who had their own team as well)  Hosed everyone off after they came out of the wrestling pit.  I think some of those kids were more excited about getting hosed off by the fire truck than about wrestling the pigs in the first place!  IT was definately one of the coolest fundraisers I've attended in a while!

The Bigger the Wrestler The Bigger the Pig & Barrel!

 The other thing that I absolutely love about the fairs up here is their Round Robins.  I competed in one of these in college, but up here they all have one!  Bailey was one of two kids showing dairy goats which helped her to qualify for the Junior competition even though it was only her first year showing.   The way it works is that the top two showmen from every division go into a points driven show-off.  The species represented are determined by the participation of the kids.  The kids have about 5 minutes per species and they have to show both of the animals of the participants.  They get a score between 1 and 5 (preferably with half and quarter points)  with the winner being chosen based on total points earned.  (I know that I would have been all over this in school and I'm pretty sure some of my students would be too!)

After the showing was done, the kids that competed all lined up to hear the results.  Bailey and one other novice got moved up to compete with the junior kids. And while she didn't win, she did an awesome job and out-showed several of the older kids in her divison!






Before the sale, they passed out trophies for all the showmanship and production awards.  Bailey got to come home with a trophy for being the reserve champion in the Goat showmanship.   All in all she had a great week showing and I really enjoyed getting to see how things were done somewhere else.  (I also enjoyed not being in charge of ANYTHING)


Until Next Time...