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Small Town Life
The Orleans County Fair opens today. A week of 4-H kids showing their animals, exhibits from local businesses, a midway with a Ferris wheel, fireworks, and all the features of a back-country punkin doin’s. I just love living here.
Alpacas are a big deal locally. You can buy their fleece and spin your own yarn, or get spun yarn from the alpaca farms.
My dad
raised Whiteface Herefords, but other breeds are populating our small farms, like the Belted Galloway this young fellow is showing.
4-H Exhibits include common garden vegetables, market packages, cut flowers, indoor gardening, fruits and nuts, plant collections (and scrapbooks), landscape pictures and plants, experiments, and horticulture methods all judged and displayed throughout the week.
Published in General
I love watching the veterinarian shows on TV when they go to the fairs and the kids show off their animals. They are so adorable! They work so hard! 4H is a wonderful endeavor for kids. I love that boy’s grin in the photo, Doug.
I admire the kids who participate. My dad tried to get me interested and I did show a calf one year, but it just wasn’t my thing. I was a big disappointment to my dad; the only thing that I loved that he appreciated was my basement printing shop with hand-set type and a treadle press. He hoped for a hunting companion or someone who loved his farm like he did, but allergies and an interest in handguns over rifles scotched those. So he tolerated me, and we were on good terms, but not what I would call close.
We showed milk goats at the fair when I was a kid. We sold grade B dairy from Jerseys & Gurnseys. But we had goat milk for us kids. Goats can eat absolutely anything and produce milk – great if you’re trying to feed kids on a budget.
We had one milk goat that won every year. My sister and I took turns showing her – Clover – she apparently looked like what a milk goat is supposed to look like.
Some good friends of ours raise goats. They are the responsibility of their two boys, 13 and 10 years old. Two of the finest boys I have ever met. Those kids are a lot smarter than I remember being.
When I was a teenager I knew a lot of kids living on dairy farms. One family showed Holstein milk cows. I was interested to know that not only did they shampoo and brush the cows before showing them, but they also applied black shoe polish to the hooves, and to the dark skin inside the ears.
Holsteins predominated the dairies. Another friend stated there were only 3 herds of Gurnseys in Missouri, including theirs. Holsteins develop large udders that cause problems after a few years. Gurnseys are a bit more hardy over a longer milking life. Most people chose the Holsteins because they produce more milk.
Another family had Jersys, which are known for producing higher fat content. They are also significantly smaller. That farmer chose them so that his wife could handle the milking if he was sick or otherwise unavailable – he had a full time job at the high school.
I never showed any animals, but I loved growing up on the farm. I was not cut out to be a farmer, and I wanted some financial stability so I left. But every kid should be lucky enough to live on a farm.
There is no gambler who is a bigger risk-taker than a farmer. Not to mention that you never get a day off. I agree it’s a great way to raise kids, but it sure is a tough way to make a living.
My aunt had Guernseys (small farm in Oregon). Rose of Picardy was the last one she kept. I got to fill in her markings on the form to get her registered. I have maintained a snobbishness/prejudice about Holsteins since. Also I remember hearing that Jerseys were meaner than Guernseys. Oh how the cows loved to watch my aunt plant corn. They knew they would be getting those delicious stalks as a treat. Also loved going to the Oregon State Fair and the Marion County Fair – the animals and the kids that showed them were the best.
No farm animal is as calm and gentle as a Jersey cow.
We had two Jersey cows for our own milk. I thought they were a bit bad tempered. Maybe they were outliers. Or possibly they were irritated by teenage boys.
We eventually ended up with a handful of Brown Swiss cows. For Placid temperaments, I’d put them up against any bovine.
I watch videos from several farm channels. Some of them occasionally go through some of the financial aspects, and the numbers they deal with would scare the bejeezus out of me.
Again I am learning from some farm video channels, a couple of which are from dairy farms. And a few of them have discussed some of the tradeoffs in different breeds over daily milk production vs. overall productive lifetime, and length of time the cow is productive after each birth. I had never given such considerations any thought as I drank my milk and ate my cheese and butter. I was also surprised that the farmers (at least with the smaller herds) identified “personalities” (bovinalities?) of the different cows (or “the girls” as one of the farmers calls her herd).
Old dairy cows get turned into hamburger, or sausage.
Some friends sold their dairy and left the state. They had a few cows they couldn’t bear to send to the sale barn, so they made a deal with my Dad. We ended up with half a dozen Brown Swiss mentioned above, who were as placid and gentle as any I’ve seen.
On the other end of behavior spectrum, they also left us with a couple of Chianina cows. Chianina’s are big and strong, and were used as oxen by the Romans. Those weren’t to be trifled with, especially if they thought you were messing with their calves.
I was in FFA. I raised a pig (Wilber) in Our school AG barn. Showed Rhode Island Reds at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show, was a competitive land judge, and was nominated to compete in the FFA Creed speaking competition.
The county fair was the highlight of our summer when I was growing up as a dairy farmer’s child! We always took cows to the fair to show. When I was a youngster, many people had dairy farms in our valley, and now, I don’t think anyone does. There may the occasional cow that someone keeps for their own milk consumption.
My parents started out their dairy farm with two Guernsey calves. They added Jerseys, Brown Swiss, and a couple of Holsteins. But we got paid a little bonus by the local cheese factory for the butterfat, so we didn’t have many Holsteins. We had about 30 cows that we milked night and morning in a big red barn. We carried the milkers from cow to cow and kept the milk in ten-gallon cans. The year I graduated from high school, my dad had to go bigger or get out, so they built a new milking barn with the pipes and the big tank and added to the herd so there were about a hundred cows. This was their business for the next twenty years.
The fair was so awesome! My dad and my older sister would figure out which groups we’d enter: “produce of dam” which meant four heifers from the same mama; different age groups; different breeds. Everything on the farm was on hold (except for the two times we had to milk the rest of the cows) for those four days while we hauled our animals to town. We’d wash the contestants, and groom them carefully. They loved lolling in the straw beds in the dairy stalls section. Showing them on the dairy day was quite tense, but we won enough ribbons (and prize money) that we bought our mom a new kitchen table set one year, and I think we got a new saddle for our horses another year. But…the glory was the point!
P.S. Jerseys tend to be sweet, but some can be not so sweet. We had a couple named Sugar Bear and Honey Bear, and then one we named Satan!
This is Honey Bear. As you can see, she is quite calm and adorable. That is 15 year-old me holding her halter, while two of my cousins, and two of my siblings are sitting on her. That’s another little sister standing at the back.
Here’s one of those “groups” entries. It’s a mother/daughters thing/Jerseys.
Here’s a Guernsey group…maybe four heifers from one mother. The people (from the left, are my second little brother (almost out of the shot), my first little brother, my Dad, and my sister who was just one year younger than me. (And I honestly don’t know who that guy is…these photos are from 55 years ago.)
And this is my glorious County Fair Queen Sister, 1971! (The one that was a year younger than me.) She was totally awesome in the role, and my dad was soooo proud that she achieved this. The horse was Suzy, one of my dad’s mares. He had beautiful quarter horses as a hobby. My sister started entering barrel racing competitions as the various rodeos she attended in the region (as a representative of our county). Suzy was so excited about the competition that my sister laughed that she could have turned the mare loose on her own, and she would have won!
One last photo: this is barn I milked in. It’s still there, but the new dairy was built in the field behind it.
In my area, the Monroe County Fair (in Michigan) is still the biggest community event of the year. I leave riding the rides to my grandchildren now, but I still enjoy the animals and the 4-H craft displays.
@CowGirl Thank you for a fantastic post! The pictures are wonderful!
I’m glad you appreciated it. Your post just flooded my memory of those awesome days of the FAIR! It was the culmination of summer. And after all that farm work that summer loaded on us, it was a delight. I’m excited to know that people are still doing The Fair. It’s such a cool thing to see farm children enjoying themselves like we did.
Dairy is a rough way to make a living. One of our neighbors told me that he hadn’t missed a milking in 60 years. Which means he hasn’t been more than a few hours away from his farm since he was a child. Lordy.
Saturday nights We would go to Cowbell to ride bulls. Cowbell was a rodeo located in Mansfield, TEXAS. Had been there since 1940 (?) or there about.
Pay Yer entry fee and draw a bull. You could win money, plus shiny gold belt buckles.
I did 4H as a kid, and it was great experience. I never showed any animals, but I made a wooden potholder hanger in the shape of a loaf of bread, which I showed at the fair. My mom still has it hanging in her kitchen. I built a doghouse for my dog Buster. I was club treasurer (in 4th grade!), so I learned how to write checks and to balance a checkbook. On the rare occasion that I write a check, I still do it the way I was taught back then. I gave a speech about the planet Pluto, so I learned about public speaking. We picked up aluminum cans along the highway to earn money for the club. Our club ran the concession stand at the 4H livestock show; so I learned how to take orders, sell things, and make change. We attended the annual awards banquet – I never won any awards, but I learned how to act, how to sit, how to eat, and how to talk to adult strangers at an event.
I gained so many life skills from 4H. There were so many patient parents and teachers who invested their time and energy in a bunch of kids.
They will eat anything, but produce milk in reasonable quantities from expensive, protein-rich feed. Nettle is protein-rich, but they prefer to destroy your fences to get what’s on the other side. Just the same, I’d be glad to have those days back.
Part of the cow prejudice I grew up with I guess.
What great times for you and your family. As an aside it shocks me that 55 year old pictures are in color. My old family pictures are mostly black and white. I really am old. 🥹
This. My aunt had to find a fellow farmer who would come in to milk twice a day (4 – 5 am first shift) if she wanted to get out of town.
I never worked with Brown Swiss. But I’ve heard that they’re easy to work with as well.
Probably it would be better to say that nettle is nitrogen-rich, and that is good for making proteins. That’s what’s measured, anyway, when comparing different feed values.
Edit: Never mind. I said it right the first time.
We had a large herd of goats but we never milked them. Dad got them to combat multiflora rose, with is invasive and hard to eradicate.
When we moved to Missouri the multifora rose was well established, but Dad didn’t realize what a headache it would be. He got the goats and we found that they would slowly, but inevitably, take out this pest. They would happily go from (house sized) thicket to thicket and gobble up all the green growth. It took years but the plants finally started to die back, because new growth never survived the goats.
Some of the goats were mohair breed, so we sheared those. In the late 70s mohair brought $5/lb, while wool brought about $.50/lb.
I didn’t know that it was possible to kill multiflora rose. I thought they would survive the nuclear apocalypse, like cockroaches.
Wow – the power of goats!
A friend of mine used her goats to slowly rid her property of the kudzu that covered sections of it.