Starting with Friday...
After I checked my Daphnia experiment in lab I met Shrewd at my dorm, and we got directions and headed to the Deerfield Fair. The Deerfield Fair is held every year, never really changes, and is a lot of fun. Shrewd and I always like to go.
We were planning on meeting Mummy and Daddy there, but the cell phone reception was bad (isn't it always?) so we wandered around a bit. First stop was the sheep barn:
Which is one of Shrewd's favorite places. Then there was the goats...
And the pigs. We caught a bit of the pig show:
And then met up with Mummy and Daddy at last, as there was reception by the swine barn. Also by the swine barn? A sausage stand. Sketchy.
We moved on the poultry barn. There were ducks that looked like Arthur from Sheldon,
and drag queen chickens. Fabulous.
We got soup in a bread bowl for lunch, then the next stop was the draft horse heavy pulling show. Basically we watched giant horses, over seven feet tall, drag 3000+ lbs across the ring. Each team had to be backed up carefully towards the weight (which was put in place by tractor). This was sometimes a bit challenging, as the draft horses were all too eager to go. The first team was called Redneck Express, which amused me.
After watching that we swung over to where the Teamsters (4-H types) were competing with their oxen. The first kid looked about 8 and his oxen responded to him like puppies. Adorable. But not very obedient. The second kid had a little better luck with his.
The oxen were so sweet, but very big, and there were two cute little kids (can't take pictures of kids not your own, that makes you a predator, or I would have gotten one of these guys) playing on the fence and, for a little while, IN the oxen ring. One of the mommies caught this and freaked out, racing over to rescue the little kid.
One of the competitors was the regional champion oxen-raiser. These are hers. She's adult-sized, compare to the little ones before.
Then the draft horse barns! Ah, horsies...
And oxen, which I actually had to look on Wikipedia to figure out that pulling oxen are basically just steers. I always figured it was like the difference between a dairy cow and a beef cow but turns out that a neutered male dairy cow is an ox. Actually all cows/domesticated cattle are oxen, but these guys are the only ones we call such. I'd show you a picture from that barn but the only one I have has family members in it.
But here, have a dairy cow. That was our next stop:
And we saw them get milked:
By this time it was getting late. We went and got a Blooming Onion to share, then looked at the shops on the fairway, including a cowboy hat shop where Shrewd got a cool fancy hat, and then got fried dough, fudge, and decided to leave.
That was fun. Then we went to the Olive Garden all the way in Manchester, and I wound up getting back to campus really late. But it was okay, in the end.
