"I Went to the Animal Fair...

...the birds and the beasts were there,"  Visiting the County Fair was a great way to spend yesterday afternoon.  It wasn't so great initially.  See, I'd bought reduced price tickets from the newspaper and printed off the receipt, thinking those were the tickets, and didn't read the fine print that said I had to go pick up the REAL tickets at the newspaper building.  *head, slap* And of course I couldn't scroll back in my email far enough on my phone for the ticket guy to honor them.  So we ended up paying for entry.  I felt bad but got over it.  My knitting friend and I went in the afternoon for a couple hours that we spent tromping around the barns and exhibit building.  We started in the chicken area; I never imagined how many varieties of chickens people raise around here.  Some had feathered Afros, others had long feathered feet.  All of the roosters were vying for "loudest crowing" and one looked like it had stuck its beak into a light socket, its feathers were all standing up.  Next came the sheep, all sheared, and we were aghast to learn that they burn or throw away all the wool.  I asked a lady sitting there and she said that they raise Suffolk sheep and have been told that the wool is no good for spinning into yarn.  I just looked them up online and, while it says they're raised primarily for meat, they are also raised for their wool.  Those people need to do some research; selling the wool would give the 4-H kids another revenue source.

Next were pigs.  Pigs are big and the first one we saw was a gigantic sow with 9 piglets.  That pig was easily four feet from nose to tail and she had to be three feet tall--one formidable mama who didn't like it one bit when her owner dangled his legs into the pen.



After the pigs came goats.  These are New Zealand Pygmy goats (or something like that).  They were about as big as a Schnauzer, not a standard one, either.





Cows were in the next building.  There were a lot of cows and a lot of really big cows.  It wasn't until we'd walked up and down three aisles of cows that I realized that they were all tied to stanchions in the middle so that their back ends were aimed at the walkways (which were scrupulously clean, btw) so we walked a bit faster and paid more attention to the south ends of the north-facing bovines.


Then there were the bunnies.  All kinds, all colors, all shapes of bunnies.  These little guys were nestled in what looked like a grooming tray for the exhibitors to use to get their entries ready for judging.  This gray, fluffy bunny was so soft that when I petted it I couldn't really feel its fur.

The next barn held the horses.  I was looking forward to petting the horses but there was metal mesh over the tops of the stall doors so you could look but not touch.  A few of them looked almost too big for their stalls, and it turned out that they're part of a drill team.  It would have been fun to see them perform.  There was no tractor- or horse-pull.  No demolition derby either.



We wandered past the Bookmobile which KW remembered coming to her neighborhood when she was a kid and was my first post-college job, not on the same vehicle for either of us but seeing it brought back fond memories.

After much searching we found the building where the vegetables, woodworking, sewing, and KNITTING exhibits were.  There weren't many knitted or crocheted entries but we checked them all out, the few felted items too.  KW looked at all the names and she said that a lot of the entries were by the same few people and thought that we might suggest to the Knitting Guild that we knit to enter the fair, so we tracked down the lady in charge and she made copies of the categories, etc. for us to look over and present to the members.  It's only $4 to enter as many items as you want, granted the cash prizes are measly, but think how much fun it'd be to show off a fair ribbon on something you made.  Even if the Guild doesn't go for it, I'm sure she and I will play along next year.


I had made up my mind to have a funnel cake at the fair.  No cotton candy, no sno-cone, no popcorn, just a funnel cake, so we got one and split it.  I even put it on my food diary.  *feeling virtuous*  It was just as crunchy and sweet as I'd hoped, so totally worth the points.  By that time, my ankle was hurting.  It was the most I'd walked in one stretch since April so we called it a day.

August 21--Mel Curtis, Tyson with Daisies.  That dog stuck by the boy no matter what.  Shep lay on the church steps on Sunday mornings while Ty and Grandma Jean were at services.  Shep would have been in the pew right next to Ty but Pastor Macklin said he was allergic to dogs and didn't want to sneeze his way through sermons so the dog had to stay out.  The same for school.  Mrs. Ethnel said she wasn't willing to risk anyone having an asthma attack because there was a dog in school.  Shep was Ty's only family, aside from Grandma Jean, since Ty's mama and daddy died in that train wreck right after Ty turned two.

On the way to drop her off we stopped at the first LFL I put books into week before last.  I was surprised to see that all of my books were gone.  So I put in more.  I'm giving my feet a rest today, although I think Durwood and I are going to the Pig for some chicken they've got on sale later.  It seems I've always got someplace to go or something to do.
--Barbara