Well, the fair is over and done for another year. Right now we are all in this dazed; don’t know what to do with ourselves mode, which is pretty much the norm for us after the fair. We spend so much time preparing, the kids put in lots of time and hard work on all their projects, the fair comes… there is a blur of business, craziness and fun all wrapped up together… then it’s over. It always takes us about a week to get rested up and back into a routine of normalness again. It was all so much fun, we all had a great time, learned a lot, and made lots of great memories.

The kids did great on all their projects…

Brooke was really happy about how her market hog project turned out. She did the whole project herself, from buying the pigs and all the feed, to doing all the chores that go along with raising them. Last year was her first year in the project and she started out not knowing much at all about raising market hogs. She made a few mistakes and didn’t do as well as she wanted to, but she ended up learning a lot from it. So this year she changed up how she did a few things and made several goals for herself. She met all her goals and got blues on her pigs, so it was a good way to finish her last year in 4H.

Miley took her Nubian goat, Sweet Pea, again this year. Last year she took her in open class, so this was the first time she showed her as a 4H project.

She got champion dairy goat…

and was sure proud of that. Sweet pea on the other hand, was just done with the whole fair thing and ready to flee and find some grass to graze, so Brooke had to help hold her so I could get a picture. I don’t blame her either; it had to be pretty boring being cooped up in a small pen when she’s used to running in the pasture.

The kids also took several other projects like arts and crafts, photography, flowers and tomatoes from the garden. They enjoyed talking with the judges and hearing the nice compliments on all their projects. They also got a lot of good tips and ideas on things they could work towards for next year.

Here are a few of Brooke’s favorite photos she entered…

Here’s a few of Miley’s favorite photos…

Once we got home from the fair, we had this waiting for us….

We’d had a big rain so a lot of them were starting to split. That meant no resting or recuperating, we had to go out the next day and get them picked. After throwing out quite a few that were badly split and starting to rot, we still ended up with this…

The tomatoes just HAD to come on all at once at the most inconvenient time. But I’m not going to complain too much because I’m grateful to have the tomatoes we’ve gotten so far. It’s been a really weird year for tomatoes; in fact, this may be all the majority of what we get for the year because my plants aren’t looking the greatest. I’ll tell you more about that in another post.

I managed to get the majority of them made into sauce and salsa… and am just now getting a chance to get caught up on everything else and a little rested up. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for sure!