Meet Me at the Fair.....

'Meet me at the Fair'

It's Atchison County Fair Week! 4-H kids and FFA students will have delivered their projects to the Velma Houts building for display and judging. There may be homes where this hasn't involved a mad rush, but at our farm, the atmosphere was always one of pure manic panic.

Baking dishes would be piled in the sink; pincushions would be on the kitchen table, photos would not yet be framed on their poster board, and there would be a frantic search for both the index cards to pin to the project...and the fair book with the directions for how to display. Millie led sewing projects for a generation; I'd like to know how many dresses, skirts, tops, and now quilts, she has finished up the day...or the night...before Fair Day.

'Don't tell me the sun is shining

Anywhere but there....'

Our fair experiences have always been more like an Alfred Hitchcock movie than a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

Allow me to elaborate. Instead of the neatly tied up loose ends and prize winning hog in the movie 'State Fair', our fair projects were fraught with tension and an underlying feeling that something might go wrong. From the first...or let's admit it, the second year of our kids' experiment with 4H calves, we learned more about Murphy's Law than the finer points of showmanship. There was never a 'Rudy' moment or a 'Rocky' comeback, the slow but inexorable climb to the top brought about by grit and determination. There were ups...but lots of downs.

Consider the year the steers escaped...over the fence....because they were part of the Hurst cow herd and selected over the years for the ability to see fences as a challenge, not an obstacle. The neighbors four miles over eventually noticed them in their herd, but by that time, we had conceded the project and decided to take our vacation a week early. The calf lot grew up in weeds and Lee and Ann, ages 9 and 8, got a reprieve.

Ask any of our kids and they will continue the saga. The steer that bloated and missed the show. Doc Nims put a vent in his side which then spewed foam during the digestive process. Pretty hard to fit a steer with an overflow valve. The steer that bit his tongue in two. The steer that broke his leg. The steer that wasn't quite dehorned enough. This isn't as bad as it sounds; over the years, Lee, Ann and Ben raised and fed and showed more than 50 steers. But every time we lost an animal, it was after 250 days of getting up early to feed and check the water, then repeating the process later that day or night.

The ostensible reason to have an animal project is not for the honor...or the glory...but to make a profit. Even after Grandpa Charlie, or TPC, or Burke Lumber, or Bill Smith Trucking paid the premium at the auction, I don't think we ever made that goal. Now that the next generation is walking down the gravel in their tall rubber boots to check the feed and 'walk' their pigs, their parents are willing to admit the truth. Money? It's just a fiction perpetuated by adults with previous experience and an ulterior motive.

Kids with livestock learn consequences. Many of us have the recurring nightmare about taking the final for a class we never showed up for. But our kids still awake fearing they've forgot to water their steers...or left the gate open...or didn't check the feed...even though the fence was torn out years ago and the cow lot is now a mum patch. That level of guilt...or call it responsibility....serves them well as adults. Dealing with loss and adversity is something kids can learn by playing sports, but it is a life lesson made more consequential by caring for another living being. Doing your best is not always good enough and will not always bring reward.

There are pictures in every August photo album. One year Ann had a steer that showed well enough to win Reserve Grand Champion, though what she remembers best is that the steer stepped on her foot on purpose.

There are also pictures of Ben telling the judge a story about the placid potbellied steer he showed his first year.

There are photos of Lee year after year, lined up with her steers alongside her siblings and cousins...showing for reserve grand one year. And getting a trophy for senior showmanship. Consolation prize for never bringing home a big ribbon.

The trophies are still in the closets in my house. But this week Blake and I will be on the bleachers as Aaron and Lizzie, Gabe and Abbie don their boots, stick a brush in their jeans' pocket, and try to keep their well washed pigs where the judge can see them.
   

Unlike Blue Boy in State Fair, we don't expect any trophies to come home with this bunch, this year. But there will be stories....and memories...and the stuff "dreams" are made of!

Posted with Blogsy

Fun for the Whole Family

"There is no such thing as fun for the whole family." Jerry Seinfeld

Deck the halls with boughs of holly.
 'Tis the season to be jolly....

'Tis the season indeed...the lovely season of steamy kitchens and the smell of home made goodies...the season for merry carols and blinking lights.....the season for quiet reflection on the blessings we have and the gift of our Lord Jesus. It's the time for board games and card games, reading books wrapped in afghans in front of a fire, and other toasty indoor pursuits.  

'Tis the season....

....for watching the weather forecast the night before and waking in the gray chill before sunrise to check the wind.  For early morning texts and climbing out of a warm bed to a cold floor.  For putting on that extra layer.....and wrapping your hands around that first cup of coffee hoping some of the warmth soaks in.  

Because it's December and these weeks before Christmas, before the New Year, are not only the season of Advent, but....the season to cover greenhouses.

October is for harvest but, if the weather holds, the early weeks of November are no time to rest.  The combines may be shedded but the tractors and tillage implements barely cool down before fertilizer is being knifed in and conservation structures repaired of the damage suffered in summer storms.  Only November rains, or heaven forbid, November snows put paid to fieldwork and send farmers to their shops and computers.

Greenhouses suffer from summer storms, but greenhouse coverings are temporary even without wind or hail. For greenhouses like ours, growing a relatively low value short season crop, then standing idle for the rest of the year, the only economical roof for all those flowers and vegetables is plastic.   Plastic is light and bright...but only for three or four years. Plastic is strong and flexible...but only for three or four years.  Plastic resists the damaging rays of the sun....but..., well, you get the drift.

July is too hot; January is too cold, but there are days in December that are, as Goldilocks says, just right.  Mornings when the frost lies heavy on the grass as the late winter sun peeks over the hills; mornings when the smoke rises from people's chimneys in a unwavering column.  When the forecast from NOAA says "winds calm to light", that's the time for the skid loader to rumble to life, to find the insert tool, a screwdriver, a hammer and the scissors, and to postpone that second cup of coffee until the plastic is all fastened down.

The greenhouses range from 100 to 150 ft. long.  The ground to ground greenhouses require two separate pieces of plastic so we pull and unfold one at a time. That means a surface area from 4000 sq.ft. to 7200 sq.ft. is just laying there, vulnerable to the slightest wisp of air movement.  If an errant breeze curls under the south end of a greenhouse, pretty soon the whole structure looks like a silver cloud or a surfer's wave.  Once the air is underneath, you can never really get it out again. This situation occurs so frequently, Blake coined a phrase to describe the phenomenon, calling it a polyethylene induced microburst". A child's first task in the family greenhouse business is to sit on a corner of plastic until someone tells you to move.

 One of our family myths concerns a day we might have been pushing the envelope weather wise. That day was so windy that Lee and Ann insist they were lifted into the  air like Dorothy's house, still holding on to their corner of plastic.

 Every family needs its legends.While their college friends headed home for Christmas break to relaxation, home cooked meals, and perhaps a ski trip to Colorado, our kids came home to perch on a precipice, backs against a frigid wind, helping cover the newest greenhouse construction.  They can be forgiven for believing their parents saved at least one naked greenhouse to cover every Christmas Eve.

The gutter connect greenhouse pieces are tubes 24 ft. wide.  The good news is that's  a much smaller piece of plastic to maneuver and maintain.

The bad news is all the work has to be done in an 8 inch gutter 10 ft. off the ground. The plastic is lifted high in the air on a homemade platform contraption, ropes tied to what we hope is an outside corner of the tube.  The manufacturers fold their tube plastic different ways, so this part of the process tends to be a crapshoot.  With a person in each gutter pulling the plastic and another on the platform attempting to keep it tracked to the center, this part of the process is both physically challenging and nerve wracking, especially if the plastic has been formed in a way that it stubbornly refuses to unfold without being forced apart inch by sticky inch by hand.

The view from the gutters is a pretty one: distant fields turned gold by the slanted winter sunlight, the patches of trees filigreed black. From the apex of a greenhouse on the hill, Hurst Greenery is adrift in a silvery sea.

Silhouetted against the winter sky, the guy held up in the air by the skid loader weaving wirelock at the other peak of the greenhouse looks the size of a Lego man.

We count down the greenhouses we cover like a child counts down the days to Santa Claus.  When the last insert is snapped down and the new plastic inflates like the blimp, we straighten our frozen knees and shed our sodden and snagged work gloves.  We roll up the ropes and haul off the plastic trimmings.  The skid loader is parked by the pyramid of new plastic rolls and the golf cart/tool cart is parked out of the weather.  Time for that second cup of coffee.  Our mantra is: If you cover a greenhouse (or two!) in the morning, you have already accomplished enough for the day.

 Every family has Christmas traditions.  Some bake cookies together; some shop Black Friday together; some gather to cut their Christmas trees together.

Our family covers greenhouses.....