County Fair Days: 4H Showing 2022

 There is nothing quite like the county fair when you are in 4H.   We used to just walk around and think "that's nice".  Now we understand so much more of what is happening behind the scenes and are part of the landscape of the fair ourselves. 

Every year I think, "we really need to enter some of our produce next year" and then in the rush of early August and bunny preparations it falls by the wayside. Maybe next year we'll finally get organized enough.

Baby A loves the Tractor Mac books.  He was so excited to meet a tractor at the fair that looks just like Tractor Mac.  We waved to Tractor Mac every day when we went in through the gates and every evening when we left the fairgrounds. 

Year 2 of competing in the judging and showmanship competitions was a little less scary. 

We spent A LOT of time hanging around the rabbit barn.  There were a lot of cuties to look at. 

Meanwhile, the big kids showed that they could identify the characteristics of their rabbit and show them off to best advantage. 

They were scored according to their age group. Abi won first place in her age group. 

The place to be in the rabbit barn was in front of the fans. It was hot all week. 

The 4Hers had to identify different rabbit breeds and characteristics from pictures. 

They also need to have a detailed knowledge of rabbit anatomy.

They judged the rabbits and described why they made those judgements. 

The kids also did some community service in the Critter Barn.  They showed chicks and ducklings off to all the kiddos that wanted to meet them. 

The 4H kids in our rabbit club made a float and road in the parade.

Baby A really liked his view of the parade. 

Brother M was lucky enough to have raised a trio of 10 week olds that made up the rabbit meat pen. They were auctioned in the big livestock auction.  Our county executive bought them for 450$.

Of course we also had to go check out the rides! Same as last year, each child got to choose one ride.

Baby A went on this free barrel ride.  He was okay until they started to pull away.  Then he was screaming "MOMMY" and crying hard. Luckily, it was just a short loop around the field. 

August and September on the Homestead

 

We've enjoyed the delights of paw paw season with around 40 fruits from our 5 year old trees. That's about double last year's harvest!

Many of them were eaten fresh with a spoon. The rest were frozen for creamy sorbet or put into morning smoothies.

Unfortunately, no one told me that cooking them, and especially dehydrating them, will give most people upset tummies.  I learned the hard way. 

Baby A says that he wants to be "nice and warm" now that we are experiencing cool fall nights. 

Our dear Natalie hatched another 8 ducklings on her own initiative.  She has been taking wonderful care of them without any work or intervention on my part. 

Not to be outdone -- two more hens decided to go broody. We will see how they do with hatching. I have been carefully monitoring their egg piles to make sure that they do not end up setting on more than they can handle. 

I marked all 13 of Broody #1's eggs with a china marker so that I can take out (see lower right) the new eggs that her friends try to add to her pile. 

Rhubarb is amazing.  After getting beaten up by the Japanese beetles, it has come back vigorously.  I harvested a big armload to make a gallon of rhubarb juice and used the pulp for fruit leather. 

Baby A is still obsessed with tractors.  This is his favorite shirt. He loved watching the construction site across the street and wants to watch a "tractor show" with daddy every night after work. 

I was trying to observe how well the summer chicks liked the mangel beets we grew and they thought I might have more food stashed away some where.  We call these chicks the "piranhas".  They are the offspring of the best foragers, which we selected from the hundred we raised last winter.  They were all naturally brooded and then raised from day 2 of their lives out on pasture.  They are lightning fast bug catchers and gobble up almost anything that I put in front of them. We will keep the 5 hens and butcher the 8 roosters later this fall. 

We try to take special care of the swallowtail caterpillars in our garden.  I let them eat my leftover fennel and extra dill, but I get annoyed when the second wave goes after my carrots. We harvested those carrots and moved the caterpillars to other locations.

We found more kits from our free range Silver rabbits. They are darling. Unfortunately, their moms do not seem to be able to keep them safe as well as the hens and ducks do.  Our cat Tiger killed one so fast that we couldn't stop him.  The kids always went to capture and cage them, but they are too young to leave their wild mamas. 

The raspberries have been absolute feast.  As with the rhubarb, the summer ones were decimated by the Japanese beetles, but these fall varieties just keep producing.  We have at least 12 gallons in the freezer and have been eating our fill every single day. 

We have had some sick livestock lately. This duckling seemed like it had something stuck in his throat. We used VetRx directly on his beak and throat and he was better the next day. 

Our 6 turkey poults on the other hand had a cough and sneezing illness. I tried garlic in their water, thyme infusions, and the VetRx again and nothing helped. Five poults died.  Only the runtiest one, a female, is left.  She still has a little cough, but she is growing and I am hopeful that she will survive. 

We grew about 300 lbs of mangel beets.  They are a winter livestock feed.  We shared some with our neighbors' goats and sheep.  The rabbits did not want them while it was hot outside, but now that temperatures have dropped into the upper 40s at night, they are loving them. 

July on the Homestead: Farm Kids

 Most of our pictures from the last month are of plants or farm activities.  :) Not too surprising since it is almost our busiest season of the year.  The fair starts this week. We have been getting our rabbits all cleaned and ready for the show. 

Baby A really likes getting into boxes and cupboards. The big kids pulled him around in this box and he loved it. 

He is less sure about my herbal concoctions... this one turned into children's elderberry syrup. I think it's delicious. Hopefully, he will too when/if he needs it. 

Baby A loves playing with cars, monster trucks, and tractors. He also enjoys sending all of those wheeled vehicles down the slide into the sand box

Hubby is almost ready to shave his beard.  We thought we would have some fun with it first.  Here it is dyed with henna.  We later overdyed it with indigo, but I do not have a picture of that yet. 

Baby A and Big Brother S have been making a new fort in the library every couple of days. They love hanging out together talking about monster trucks and tractors. 

We have had several very productive family weeding days this month.  

Baby A is already getting the hang of hoeing a row. 

One of our self sufficiency successes this month was harvesting our lawn.   We let it grow for about 4 weeks (6-10 inches tall).  Then hubby mowed it with the tractor.  We "tedded" the grass (aerated and turned it over so that it would dry evenly) and then gathered it up with our new lawn sweeper. 

We gathered 10 big bags from our first "lawn harvesting".  I wish we would have figured out the lawn sweeper part of it earlier.  That is really what made it possible.  (I was raking it by hand before and it was too much.) I think we will be able to harvest one more time this summer and maybe once this fall. 

We harvested about 150 lbs of potatoes this month.  These two helpers love doing that as their garden chore.  It is like hunting for buried treasure. 

We had a lot of extra 4H classes this month.  Reviewing all the things that the kids learned throughout the year in preparation for the fair. 

In addition to harvesting our own "hay", I learned from a book called "Rabbit Production" that I can feed our rabbits 50% weeds with no ill effects on their growth.  That is really helping cut down on our feed costs. We are giving pellets every other day and weeds on the alternate days. 

On a stormy day we picked 12 quarts of blueberries with our friends. So no photos of the picking. I made 8 quarts of blueberry pie filling. A couple jars did not seal and we *had* to make some pies (haha). 

Sometimes my garden helpers are not excited about the task at hand.  Here we were harvesting radish pods.

Fourth of July week, daddy's parents came to visit.  We took a lovely hike, minus the poison ivy which was all along the trail.  We found minnows and crayfish in the creek. 

Grandpa J "Pa" and Grandma S "Gramma" (according to Baby A) read lots of books and played with little piggie toes. 

We also went to the Air and Space Museum.  It is always so interesting to hear about the history and current technology for flight. 

Daddy successfully landed our space shuttle in the flight simulator there.

We went to a church fourth of July picnic and pool party.  We saw the fireworks.  Baby A thought that they were "bunder" (thunder) at first.  

Daddy had a little mishap while trying to fix the base of our sliding door....

And another funny moment: I sent brother S outside to hose out the coolers :) And this is what I spied him doing instead. Hmmm.  Farm kids.