The middle week of the State Fair is Dairy week. If Chris goes to work for the Forest Service next summer like he plans then this was his last State Fair. He showed his 6 goats and Trista came through again. She was not only selected Champion Toggenburg, she also won Supreme Champion Dairy Goat. That's over all the goats shown in the Junior show. Way to go, Trista and Chris! You can't see the belt buckle in this photo but it has a bear in the middle with CA poppies all around it. It's gorgeous.

             The sheep show was over Labor Day weekend. Every since last year I've been trying to plan a display that would win the $750 Marketing Award. I spent an inordinant amount of time in the last two weeks before the show thinking about this display. I knew I needed to upgrade my posters and I learned how to use more of the features of PowerPoint to do that. I even found myself taking close-up photos of cement, sand, fence boards, etc after i learned how to make my own background for the posters.

Here are two photos of my display. On the right, friends Mel and Marilyn demonstrate Navajo weaving. They demonstrated on Sunday and drew huge crowds. Several friends helped me staff my display throughout the fair. I had so many items on display (yarn, lambskins, etc) that I didn't dare leave the area unattended. I wove much of the time I was there-got 3 wool V-shawls woven. The work and the time paid off. I didn't win 1st place Marketing Award--I got 3rd. But I won an award for Best Program Directed at the Public. I also won the Herdsman award for flocks of 9 head or less and the most prestigious award is 3rd place for Best Educational Exhibit over all 3 weeks of the fair and all livestock species!

What about the sheep show? After all, that's why we're there. Last year I got the fair to offer a division for "Heritage" breeds. That was a huge show and it was split this year. The wool sheep had their own division, but the "Heritage and American" breeds show still includes sheep that are awfully hard to judge in the same show. I was the only Jacob exhibitor and competed against Tunis (a large-frame meat sheep), St. Croix (a hair sheep), a few Scottish Blackface, and Shetlands. In most of the classes you can enter 2 sheep, so I got 3rds, behind the Tunis. There was only 1 yearling ram representing each breed though. So my ram, Ranger, got 2nd behind the Tunis and he was able to enter the Champion drive. The yearling Tunis was Champion, but Ranger was awarded Reserve Champion.