So…over the winter, it was decided by the folks who decide such things that our county fair would be giving 2014 a miss. I can’t pretend I was actually surprised by that news. The fair has been positively bleeding money for quite a while, and the county isn’t exactly made up of nothing but filthy rich bastards who are going to walk around a fair randomly flinging hundred dollar bills at the vendors or anything.
Quite the contrary.
Fortunately, the same person who told me that the fair was going to be taking the year off was also the person who told me that the only part I cared about was still on, just, details TBD at the time.
And she was able to tell me both facts at the same time.
So there was, like, only a split second of panic in re: what about the 4-H auction?!
You know…there are some groups that fold up like a cheap collapsible chair when they hit a headwind. And others that end up racing frantically in circles screaming wildly and hitting each other with clipboards and stuff until eventually everybody goes home to put band-aids on their wounds and snark off about how if it weren’t for that other guy they totally could have triumphed over this adversity.
4-H and FFA? Are not those groups.
They just went, “Ooooookay, so, there’s no fair for our auction to be held within, soooooooo…we’ll just have ourselves an Ag-Fest. Bam. Problem solved.”
A whole lot of hard work later, they are not only putting on an agricultural festival – they are putting on one heck of one.
You know, I have to say, even though I had nothing to do with any of that apart from pledging to show up and support it…I’m so proud. It makes me almost weepy-happy to know that there are still people, still kids, out there who have the ability to just kind of…take things in stride, roll up their sleeves and put sweat equity into what they want like that.
It also shames me a bit; I bitch and moan longer and harder over minor inconveniences every year, and can be way too willing to just throw up my hands and say something is too hard, or too unfair, or too unlikely to succeed.
It’s like I’ve forgotten what it even is to have grit.
And it gives me incredible joy to be shown what it looks like by others. I can be more like these kids – and their parents and benefactors – when I grow up.
Which I totally intend to do someday. Probably.
ANYWAY. The auction is this weekend; my buyer card and information brochure arrived in the mail today. And I went, “SHRIEK!” and promptly showed it to the cats.
They were supremely disinterested.
Because they’re cats, and disinterested real or feigned is kind of how they roll most of the time.
But I am not a cat, so I’m still all excited. Day after tomorrow, I can finally put my money where my mouth is. Kinda literally, come to think of it.
Sweeeeeeeeet!!
Even better, Swingle Meat is back on the processor’s list (last year, they weren’t doing hogs, which was the only ‘larger’ meat I was buying…we still had an awful lot of beef left at the time, and I won’t lie, I was pretty moody about it); I can’t wait to have more of their smoked ham hocks, bacon, and frozen-in-marinade roasts on hand.
It’s going to be a delicious summer. And fall. And winter. And spring.
I can just tell.
