Monday back to school and work for a few days, and then we will be at the Othello Fair. The boys all had football practice. Toni had a lot of phone calls to return. Dad worked at Pioneer Monday. We got steers ready, paperwork ready and food ready for our last terminal show. Othello is one of my favorite fairs, and as tired as a I am, I am actually really looking forward to Othello. They have some different events to watch that are fun, mounted shooting, draft pull. The food is great and cheaper than the BF fair. It is a smaller, more community oriented, fair.
Tuesday the kids went to school, the boys to football practice, and Toni and Anna hauled our steers into Othello. Leslie hauled their steers in. So it was Toni, Anna, and Leslie to unload all 7 steers and the 5 heifers. Monica and Vixen were pretty anti going to the fair. Monica tried to load herself back up in the trailer to go home when she realized she was at a fair. After she realized there was no going back, she settled in ok. Stacy brought Adrian, Kaine and Kade after practice. I got there after work and chores. We made a deal with Stacy that as long has he hauled the kids to and from practice, Adrian could stay with us and Stacy didn’t have to stay at the fair. He thought that was a good deal. So did we!
Also on Tuesday, we heard our good friend Gary Moore lost his battle with cancer. Anna is riding his horse, Katie, she has had her about a year now. Gary and Judy have come and watched the kids show the past few years. Gary was a great man and will be missed by many.
Wednesday we had market and heifers, it did not start until 10, so we slept in until 5:30. We washed everything and then Simplot made us breakfast. It was great. FFA showed first and then 4H. Anna was grand champion in Market with Pumpkin and Kade was reserve with Kid Curry aka Silver. Kade really wanted to beat Anna, but his steer was just a touch too light to win overall. Both steers have been awesome in the show ring. Kaine took his homegrown extra steer that hadn’t been worked on as much and didn’t have a club look. He was a good steer, just not a show steer. We had lots of kids in the championship round. Next we had the heifer show, FFA, 4H then Open. Anna was reserve champion overall with her Angus heifer, Beth. This was Beth’s first show, as she is a 2021 AI calf. She was a rockstar other than a few kicking incidents. Kayla, Savannah and Grace, who are 2, 4 and 5 years olds, all had division champions in open. I was named the Ringmaster by the Beef Superintendent so I got to run the heifer show the way I wanted to, so it was great. Then we went back and had lunch burritos and washed. I went home and did chores and then came back.
Thursday was fitting and showing. The kids all showed great. They all made it back to the championship round, even Kaine with his steer that had no experience. I would just like to say that Kaine handled the steer like a pro, even when the steer wasn’t cooperating. Anna was Grand Champion Senior showman, Kade was Grand Champion Intermediate showman and Julian was Grand Champion Jr Showman. Anna was also overall 4H showman and Judge Toth said if he had a reserve it would have been Julian (Kade also showed very well in the final drive). When Judge Toth told Julian he liked Julian’s belt, Julian replied “I do too, but it would look better with a belt buckle.” That kids is witty! He must have made the perfect impression because he was the top Jr and showed like a rockstar. Then Kayla and Savannah went and showed PeeWee sheep with the Shattucks. They had A LOT of fun, so Savannah helped them put away the lambs. The bad thing was that after showing the sheep, the two littles thought they owned those sheep. We got to hear over and over, I want to walk my sheep. How many times can one sheep be walked? Thousands. Then we broke for lunch and the kids went around to learn how to show all of the animals. The beef kids all started out together and before we knew it there were 15 kids all in a group working together to learn how to show each other’s animals. It was pretty cool. All of the kids made good friends with some of the kids from other species on Thursday. We saw many of those kids during the rest of the fair as they came to hang out with our group. Thursday night everyone celebrated a belated birthday for Marlo, she had gone to Kansas for her birthday so we did not get to celebrate it then. It was a really fun celebration that ended with cupcakes from the Cow Path bakery in Othello. If you haven’t tried the Cow Path DO! It is really good.
Friday I had to go to work. However, the kids had judging in the morning, and Ady beat Toni’s judging scores, so she won a milk shake from Toni. Toni had a respectable score, but Ady was the Grand Champion junior and had an awesome score. The kids had round robin at noon, and then an awards ceremony after, to find out how they did in the round robin and get their awards. At the awards ceremony the kids found out that Fedex had lost their belt buckles. Julian was devastated, it is his first one and he was really looking forward to it. Anna won the senior division of the round robin. After the awards ceremony the kids went to do their homework. I went home and did chores on my way to the fair Friday night. Toni had 8 box seat tickets to the rodeo that night, so Traci and the kids all went (that is with Traci holding one kid on her lap). Thanks Traci for the sacrifice because the rest of us were way too tired to make it through the rodeo. I guess the cows for the wild cow riding were woofy, like hunted some of the competitors. Of course, that leads to reminiscing about Ben’s days doing the wild cow riding at Othello with our good friends Hugo, Luis, and his brother Chad. Once Hugo quit going and it was just Luis, Ben, and Chad they won the wild cow riding both nights. And Hugo never did while cow riding with them, and some of the pics below are from the old days. LOL. They “retired” after that 2-night win. Not saying anyone was the weak link, but……
Saturday was the sale, the sale was great, thank you to our Othello buyers, Dale Bayley (Kaine and Kade), Edith Spencer (Anna), K’ntucky Turf (Julian), Industrial Ventilation (Natalie)and DC Drilling (Ady). After the steers sold we went and had fair food for lunch. Next we walked around, had balloon animals made, watch some more of the sale, bought a couple of pigs, told Whitney we bought her a duck (we didn’t). Then we went to the buyer’s diner and after that Kaine, Keegan and Ady got hypnotized. It was really funny. At home Ben weaned all of the calves and gave them a blackleg booster. He rolled up with wire in circle 5 that we were using as a pen for Gunner on the irrigated grass.
Sunday we cleaned up and went home, that was our last fair, now to get ready for a jackpot show in November. We get to start over halter breaking. And on to weaning and shipping foals, calves are all weaned. Ben made sure the fence was up below circle 3 and moved the big Angus bulls down there. We moved the new group of show heifers and steers in the big run so they had more room to run around. The kids did homework all day.
The weather has really turned and we finally got some rain! When the rain finally hits you can’t complain, even if you are at the fair and would like to complain, you can’t. Now we start Friday Night Lights- the two big boys have been going to football practice and now it is time to start the games. Jax will start playing on Saturday. Fall is not officially here until Wednesday, but it is starting to feel like it.
KT Ranch 
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