(Reserve) Champion of the County Fair

Big weekend here in Extremely Rural America, everyone. This was the weekend of The County Fair.

The County Fair is a big deal here, hence all the capitalization. It's mostly a showcase for the kids, who can enter various kinds of projects, handicrafts, baked goods, and whatever, as well as animals to show.

We didn't have any animals this year, thanks to our month-long absence, but there were still several ways for Cubby in particular to participate.

Cubby is the only one of my kids old enough to do the official 4-H projects, and for each one of those he is required to do some kind of display at the fair. His two official projects were origami and photography.

For the origami display, he did a poster showing the step-by-step folds to make a dog. That got a first place ribbon.

For photography, he submitted a black and white photo of an apricot tree in a pasture after a snowstorm, plus two portraits of Poppy. His black and white photo got a first place ribbon. The other ones got second and third place ribbons.

But the real prize winner was his garlic. This was not a 4-H project, because he hadn't chosen gardening as one of his official projects, so he entered the garlic in the open class for agriculture. That means it was in with the adult entries. When we went to look around after the judging, he was thrilled to find a huge pink ribbon on his garlic announcing it the Reserve Champion for the entire vegetable class.

Reserve Champion OF THE WORLD. Or at least the county.

Further glory awaited Cubby later in the day when he won first place in a goat-dressing contest (they just had to get a t-shirt over the goat's head), second place in the calf scramble (chasing calves with paper money rubber-banded to their tails), and first place in steer riding (just what it sounds like).

Cubby excelled in many areas at the fair this year, but of course I'm most proud of his ribbon for gardening. That's my boy.