Well not entirely, but it is coming! 

The first day of my favorite month, the first whole month of my very favorite season.  Autumn, my favorite time of the year, hands down, I don’t even have to pause and make sure. And now that I am home from the asphalt jungle that is The Fair, I am ready for it to rock and roll. 

And to make it really feel like autumn, Bet and I delivered pumpkins Thursday!  It is a little early for them and some were still showing a little green still but it is for a birthday party this weekend and my friend wanted them from a small local farm not the supermarket.

When we went out to fetch the pumpkins for the birthday party, we harvested the last of the green beans, lots of cucumbers, zucchini, and the peppers and tomatoes are waiting patiently.  It will be a busy weekend for us processing our extra garden produce.

But before we usher in the first solid month of autumn lets take another peak at VF&G’s time at The Fair. 

I have a good crew at VF&G’s booth and I love each and everyone of them!  At the far southwest end of the fairgrounds is the Rabbit-Poultry barn and when we are in J barn the Washington Junior Poultry Expo is down at the Poultry barn and so are half my helpers.

Grandson Kai, under his momma’s tutelage, is becoming a good solid Birdsman.  When he comes up to the turkey display in J-barn he loves to sit inside the cage like his Auntrabecca and Auntie Bet and tell all the fair goers about the turkeys, but his favorite is holding and telling about the quail.  This year he not only showed how he can put them to sleep, he fake shot the little bugger who obliged Kai and slowly “died” in his hand.  Kai loved doing this for the fair-goers so much that the quail had a bit of a time regaining his equilibrium which of course brought the PETA type folks outta the woodwork.  We’ll keep tricks to a minimum next year.

See, he loves to have his poultry upside down.  Actually when the kids fit and show their birds they have to put them through all sorts of different positions to show the judge the different aspects of their birds.

My other helper, Anne Bowerman, is showing how to do a health check, specifically for parasites. Bird show-ers blow on the down feathers to part them to check for lice down on the skin.  Obviously these birds don’t have lice because they went through a vet check the morning they were brought into the fair, but bird showing is all about conveying to the judge that the exhibitor knows how to care for the birds.

The judge is also looking for basic knowledge and the exhibitors’ ability to display the characteristics of their birds to the birds’ best advantage.  Abby Bowerman is showing the judge how to fan the wing of her duck to make sure that the duck has all the feathers, that they are in proper condition and proper color and markings.

The Washington Junior Poultry Expo is a great place to get a solid start in exhibiting at fairs.  It is one of the few larger exhibits for youth in the state where you do not have to be in 4-H in order to participate.  With the loss of funding for such things as County Extensions, I expect to see a resurge in open class youth and more open class adult exhibitions of birds and animals at fairs that are now primarily 4-H oriented.

The weather at The Fair was very different from recent years.  The last few years we have had some warm days and rainy days at the fair.  This year we had sweltering days.  It finally got so hot that we had to make a request of Dirt, “Bring fans!”

He was a dear and came down on the one day he didn’t intend to.  I went out to the trailer to meet him and help him get the fans through the crowds and into the barn.  Parking is at a premium at the fair but because he was bringing fans

I didn’t expect to see this when I got to the trailer.  He had already headed in with the two stand fans from my Hippy Hot Hut so all I had to take a picture of was the evidence of what must have been quite a sight.  See the bungee cords on the seat?

The heat brought out more PETA types, one woman urgently alerted us to our panting Bourbon Red jenny up on a perch.  Luckily we had Dirt in our booth at the time to upset her further.  After assuring her that the turkeys would be fine, that we had fans going on them, that the panting is like human sweating.  Dirt tried to interject some humor into the conversation by questioning her lack of concern about us, we didn’t have the fans pointed at us, just the birds.  Oh my, that made her terribly angry.  What about exhibiting bird and animals at fairs make folks assume that I don’t give a rip about their well being.  Aside from just plain liking the birds themselves like everyone else does, I have a financial investment in their wellbeing and will darn tootin’ make sure that they don’t drop dead from heat exhaustion at the fair, I might, but they won’t.

Saturday morning the clouds rolled in but not enough to cool off the fair-grounds, we still employed the fans and the turkeys continued to do their cormorant impressions (sitting on their perches on on the ground with their wings hanging out from their bodies.  And panting. 

But then along came Sunday morning, more rain and more cool.  Now was the morning to stop for piping hot Scones!  A tradition at The Puyallup is to by at least a bag of a dozen scones.  I’m not real sure why, they are yummy, but like a lot of foods at the fair, I think that because we are at the fair they just taste better.  I started to do a critic of the Scone and quickly stopped when I realized that they were paling in comparison to home-made.  Maybe next time I make them at home I’ll throw a little shaving and straw on the floor and burn some sugar to imitate the smell of the cotton candy, maybe that will make mine “world famous” enough for me to eat half a dozen with no guilt.

The farther we get into the days at the fair the more relaxed and looking for a bit of fun we get.  When repeating the same jokes and lines to each new group of fair-goers no longer gets our getter we expand our adventures to the other booths.

Bet had scoped out willingness of the other exhibitors in the barn in sharing the affections and attributes of their animals and found few takers.  Jim of Jim’s U-Fish is always up for sharing his buddies.  So off we went, down to the other end of the barn to see Stanley the camel.

I gotta say, Stanley must only gets smooched by the most ardent of smoochers, his breath was horrid.  I’d rather do a face plant in a cow pie that have that rub on my skin

let alone my lips.  But Bet and

Rebecca couldn’t resist.

The last morning Bet continued her kissing mood across the way to the Yak

and Watusi from Satsop Exotics.

After all was said and done it was a very good fair, went in with firm direction and resolve, met some new folks, met up with many old friends, made some contacts for the Farm, had lots of laughs, worked through frustrations, made some new fair memories, revisited some old memories, won .  And each day on and off…

we looked like this little poult.

But wow, I can’t believe we’ve only been home for a week, we’ve gotten a ton done, I’m looking forward to telling you all about what we’re up to.  I’ll do my best to get back here soon Dear Reader, I think I’m gettin’ my blog groove back.

This is the one certain time of the year that I definitely don’t stick to my own guidelines of using only pictures from VF & G.  September is the month that Vicktory Farm and Gardens moves into different locations.  Early September we expand to the mountains, mid-September we move to The Fair.

I had no idea while I was at The Fair what this week’s Header Challenge would be. (By the way go to the side board when you’re done here and see what the other challengers have this week.) I came home to find that Sandy has chosen “Moving Pictures” for the theme.  Great!  I got one for that.  I normally would have tossed it, for its poor quality, dark barn, nearly dead camera battery and movement and all I got was blur. 

But I couldn’t.  It was a moment in time that definitely needs to be captured and kept. 

It was the end of The Fair, time to break down and go home. Because we bring our own pens, and nursery, it takes us a bit to get broken down and ready to haul out.  We end up waiting for others to pull in and load.  We’ve learned to be totally patient and to make sure we stay in a light hearted mood.

Dirt is usually always light hearted but he rarely does silly things.  This time he did and I was barely prepared to capture it on digit.

Dirt and Mike Bowerman had come back into the barn with a bird crate in a large wheel barrow. Mike was able to talk Dirt into getting in the barrow once they took the crate out.  Not sure how that happened, just goes to show how well Dirt and Mike, busy tired men, stay on top of their good moods while waiting their turn to get the heck home after some grueling days.

I get that it is technically a horrible picture, unless of course I fake that I intended for the picture to come out the way it did, you know to show the motion of the moment.  But I can’t lie, it wasn’t intentional, just a poorly taken shot that I fortunately have an excuse to use.  A moment in time, a moving moment in more ways than one, but isn’t that why we take pictures, attempting to capture those moments that quickly move out of view?

I always like to add something new to the booth each year. 

 Last year it was the baby quail (cheepers) pen, that has turned into the baby pen because this year we didn’t have baby quail but we had baby turkeys (poults).  But that wasn’t what was new this year, just changed up and recycled.

Our signs were new, the paint was barely dry Wednesday morning.  But it isn’t the only new thing. 

My produce basket that had indigenous vegetables in it.  Did you know that before the discovery of Americas the europeans knew nothing of tomatoes, squash, beans, pecans, corn, peppers……

So what is the other thing that is new?

A show case of eggs.  An old aquarium really.  Where we had an ostrich egg, and egg from a goose, turkey, chicken, duck and quail.  It got a lot of attention.  Most of the attention was good.  Some was very good, lots of great questions followed by great interaction with the public.

But some was frustrating.  Like explaining forty times over to one child that, “no, no chick came out of the egg, only the white and yolk out of the holes we made.  No, no chick will come out.  No, no chick came out.”  Argh.

But the best of the worst was when I turned from facing the pens to face the aquarium to see Anne, my helper, have her hands on the aquarium and see the aquarium rock back and forth.  For a split second I wondered why Anne would be rocking the aquarium.  I quickly realized that she was keeping it from falling!

There was an angry faced child on the other side with his big fat paws on either side of my glass aquarium shaking it liked a crazed fool.  It reminded me of the little girl in the movie Nemo.  I reached over Anne and the aquarium, grabbed it to arrest it from any further movement, looked the little creature in the eye and told him he could not shake my glass case like that!  He gave up.  Walked over to his mom and exclaimed to her that the stupid eggs wouldn’t crack.  She suddenly realized that he was doing something he shouldn’t and said sweetly, “You can’t do that dear, there are eggs in there.”    No apology to Anne or me.

Loudly I say, “Not to mention the glass aquarium!” 

I turn, totally shaken, Dirt predicted that my aquarium was going to hit the asphalt floor, and another fair-goer who has watched the entire incident and is standing with his mouth open says, “one a day, right?” 

To which I say, “you mean valium? Yeah.”

Other than that, I loved having my egg collection there.    So in light of that I will be making some sort of show case, most likely plexi-glass connected to a heavy base.  And we’ll add some different eggs from the same species.