Showing beef cattle.

Oh, the fair. Since I was ten years old and fresh out of third grade, it’s been the sparkling highlight of my summer, even my year. Silly city folk may not understand the appeal of 14-hour days in the stifling heat and the constant odor of eau du livestock, but I live for it. Especially now that I am older and I can roam around the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds, alternately catching up with friends who are also in 4-H, checking out the other projects, and taking care of my own animals.

I used to exhibit other things besides livestock – I did sewing my first year, then home environment the next, and then just settled down and turned in an art project each summer for about five years. But as other areas of my life started to infringe upon my 4-H time, I trimmed my projects down to just one, Beef. I’ve been showing beef steers and heifers for 10 years now, and I’ve found that I’d rather deal with them than any amount of thread, paintbrushes, or home décor.

I’m not gonna lie – its kind of a big deal, this livestock project business, especially when beef cattle have to be trained and taken care of for almost a year. It used to be I would spend entire Saturdays throughout the winter working my calves, breaking them to lead with a rope halter or brushing their hair. But again, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to prioritize. Now, most of the work happens in the summer, when I have more free time and less worries about how dirty I get.

I’ve always taken pride in the fact that, despite my animals sometimes weigh upwards of 1300 pounds, I can usually drag them around the show ring with little ado. Recently I was looking through some old pictures for my graduation open house, and I was shocked to see a picture of my first year showing in 4-H – I was barely five feet tall and showing a Simmental steer that held its head about a foot higher than my own, not to mention that Mask (as I called him) weighed something like 1250 pounds. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Now – I think it’s a little sadistic. What if my little Masky-poo decided he wasn’t going to be nice and stand still? What if he wanted to just kick me for fun?

In fact, when I was in seventh grade, I raised a calf from birth – I bottle-fed it with milk formula and walked it from a small outdoor pen to the barn every night. Justin (that was his name, after Justin Timberlake from N Sync, a Gelbvieh steer, was my little teddy bear. But guess what happened when I got to the fair after nearly a year of taking care of him? He jumped up and down and kicked a poor little third grader in the shoulder during the night show. Five minutes later, once he was tied up in the beef barn, everything was fine.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much I’ve toiled with them, leading them around in the barn lot or the backyard – they might still want to run around a little in the show ring. At least in sewing my skirt didn’t decide to tap-dance during judging.

Posted by Jordan at 7/19/2007 10:25:00 PM