380 likes and 598 shares on Facebook...continued

So yesterday was the big day for Kendall, and I have to say, I couldn't have been more proud of him.  Although he was still nervous as could be, he bucked up and went out and showed his calf with the help of an older 4-H member( Thanks Steph!).  Hopefully, we will have pictures later this week.  Steph did the "driving" and Kendall did the "steering(moving legs)" according to him.  Even though I was nervous as to what his mindset would be when he got ready to go into the ring, the look on his face as he was holding his ribbon coming out of the ring made it all worth it.  He had support from all sides of his family.  For those that don't know, I call Kendall my son(which he is), but legally he is my step son and one of the best parts of yesterday was that his dad, dad's girlfriend, and his grandparents from that side of the family were all there to support him along with Beth's folks, my folks, his uncle and not to mention all the 4-Her's that know him.  As him and I drove home with Rampage last night, we talked quite a bit about the days events...how he had fun playing with his friend Michael, and that he was happy to know that so many people were proud of him.  He also told me that he wants to continue to show cows, but for right now, he only wants to show little ones.  I told him I could live with that because I remembered....HE IS ONLY 8 YEARS OLD.  I told him that was fine, and that he could show a heifer at the Hoosier Beef Congress that we were planning to sell a little later next spring and that by the time we sold her, we would have a fall born in the barn that he could take to junior nationals and the fairs. One thing I will say made me smile, was the fact that when the judge came over to talk to him, she put her hand on the calf and Kendall was the only person in his class that pulled his comb out of his pocket and combed his calf as she walked away.  What makes this funny, is that I tend to expect this of older showman and one night while Kendall and I were working in the barn, we were talking about what to do when a judge touches your calf, that your pull your comb out of your right pocket(yes, always the right), comb the calf and return the comb with the teeth pointed in.  I think it's kind of funny that he totally remembered to do something we had not really hammered on without being reminded of it, yet we can tell him things 500 times and he does not remember...oh well, at least he remembered this.

OK, so I never intend to get on a soapbox on this blog...I set this up to be another avenue for marketing our livestock and letting people know what is going on around our place, but every now and then you are going to see me jump right up on that box...today is one of those days!

As I stated in the previous blog regarding this subject, I would never push any of this on my kids, I would do my best to encourage it, but never push it.  It really annoys the hell out of me when people that don't understand anything about the lifestyle of a farm family or the life of a show family start telling me what I should or should not do as far as raising my kids.  Case in point, yesterday at the fair, I had a person extremely close to my family tell me, and I quote"  Well hell, if you are going to have someone else leading that calf and just have your son scratch it, you might as well put it in their name and let them show it."  Not gonna lie, that really pissed me off.  Why?? Because this person knows nothing about all the effort we have put in just to get to this point.  This person does not understand all the friendships that are made by being gone 3 weekends a month showing livestock, not to mention the amount a bonding time( both good and bad) that our family has.  I simply looked at this person and said, " We did it this way so that no one got hurt and we did not take three steps back and be another 2 years before he showed again."   I can't tell you the countless youth I have had the privelage of metoring through livestock projects over the years and the one thing I always here parents say is, "Ya know, we just don't seem to have much trouble with Jack or Jill", and that is what I want for my family.  I am not saying that just being affiliated with this program is going to make sure that your kids don't get into trouble later in life, that is where this thing called parenting comes in, however I would be willing to bet that if you polled most 15-19 years olds that have been in 4-H, FFA or a junior livestock program that taught them honesty, responsibility, and good sportsmenship, you would find that the percentage of "troubled kids" would be very, very low.  Sure, this ain't the cheapest thing to do with your kids, and we all know how tight money is.  By the time you buy the animals, feed, gas to shows, hotels, food, electric at the barn, supplies, etc...most of us could afford to take a REALLY nice vacation each year.  But that is the point, people like us consider these weekend shows, fairs, junior nationals, fall majors our vacation for the year and we would not trade the experiences for anything.  In closing, much like Crystal Blinn( CrystalCattle.com, Sure Champ representative) says, make sure you are an "Agvocate"...whether that is educating people of what types of humane, healthy food your and your family raise, or about why it is important to raise our kids in the world of junior livestock programs teaching responsibility and everything that goes with it.