One Hot Show

I hate hot weather.  I always have.  If Indiana stayed in the 50-70 degree range all year long I would be one happy girl.  Unfortunately, July in Southern Indiana has had an insane number of 90 degree days, and as I'm typing this, my husband told me that the heat index could be 110 degrees tomorrow.  Normally, I would choose the coolest day of the week to mow the yard, prune my roses in the early morning before it gets too hot and stay in the air conditioning as much as possible.

It's a good plan in theory, but not this week.  It's fair week here, and our nephew is showing calves for the first time.  Getting the calves ready for all these months has been a true family affair.  Nick and I halter broke them (and several others) back in the fall when they were still relatively small.  We've spent countless hours walking them and making sure they were gentle enough for our nephew to handle them as he's not been too sure about this whole cattle show thing.  My brother-in-law has spent most mornings since school got out washing the calves and teaching our nephew how to set them up.

Unfortunately, my brother-in-law hurt his knee last Thursday and could hardly walk on Saturday when it came time to move the calves and get them ready for the 4H show.  That meant a 14 hour day for me and Nick that started a little before 6 am thanks to my Mom's dog who was staying with us.

It was a hot experience, although tomorrow promises to be worse.  Nick and I spent the morning (after we got everything unloaded and weighed in) washing all three calves while my brother-in-law dried them with the blower since that required the least amount of movement on his part.  We had to make another trip to the farm, I fell off the tractor and scraped up the palm of my hand, finished getting the calves ready, made a quick trip home to shower and change, and then went back to the fairgrounds to get things ready to my nephew to show.  He did a great job for his first year, and one of our heifers won Champion Angus Heifer, and the steer won Champion Angus Steer.  My nephew was thrilled he won some ribbons and a trophy or two, and is already making plans for what he's taking next year.  Now if we can just survive the County Born and Raised Show tomorrow night.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of my nephew and his calves.  Stay cool, and for those of you NOT working with livestock at the fair, enjoy your a/c!