New York State Fair

I was really stressed about going to the fair. It's committing to be there Wednesday through Labour Day Monday. It's a lot of prep work with the goats, everyone needed to be re-clipped. Plus we planned to stay there so we could keep any eye on everyone since it was the first time we were taking them away for longer than a day show. So that meant packing camping gear and food, we didn't plan on living on fair food all week, for both nutritional and financial reasons. Our stall assignments were right by one of the main doors and the milk room. Which was nice because we got to talk to lots of people and answer questions and dispel some myths about goats. 'It was a bad location for those same reasons, there was constantly people coming through and being beside the milk room had two disadvantages. First, the light in the milk room doesn't shut off, so we had a pretty bright nightlight every night. Second, there are psycho goat owners that milk at 4 in the morning, they made quite a bit of noise, and then our goats saw others being milked and getting their grain and thought it was time for them to be milked and would start screaming at us to get up. We've been promised that we'll be placed somewhere else next year. And I might come home one night to get a real nights sleep and a nice shower.

Overall I'm so glad we went. Most exciting is we did the one day milk test. Ivy, Catarina, Raizel and Sera all tested. Raizel and Ivy both earned their star milker status. Ivy blew everyone out of the water. She took highest protein, highest butterfat and highest milk production in the Alpine breed. AND SHE GAVE THE HIGHEST BUTTERFAT among ALL the goats that were on milk test!!! We were very proud of her. Especially since she and Alice were the two first goats we bought...out of the swap sheet.

Hurray for Ivy! Ivy making a silly face.

To fill the time between milk test times (am & pm milking) since there isn't a show that day a "goat bowl" was organized. It's teams of 4 people and you answer trivia questions against other teams. It's fun and silly and "competitive" in who's going to have bragging rights and smack talking. My team won :)

There was then two days of showing, Junior Doe one day and Senior Doe the next. We took a couple of lower end ribbons in the showing, which really isn't bad considering how big the classes were and the quality of animals that were there.

Andrew & Sera (over 3, under 4 class)

Andrew & Ivy (over 5 class)

On Sunday, now that all the stress of the showing is over there is a costume class. It's fun for the kids but also some of the adults get into it. And some adults learned that you shouldn't make a bet you can't win.

Tommy Lee & Pamela Anderson

Pretty, Pretty Princess