Three Things Thursday

Here’s the latest installment of Three Things Thursday, the purpose of which is to “share three things from the previous week that made you smile or laugh or appreciate the awesome of your life.”

Nuggets of Knowledge from the Washington State Fair

In the post about our recent trip to the Washington State Fair, I wrote about our visit to the animal barns. One of the things that makes this visit so much fun is seeing how the kids from FFA (Future Farmers of America) and the various 4-H Clubs invest in their animals. Looking at the displays that accompany the animals, it’s evident that these are not just fair projects; these animals are pets that the kids genuinely love.

On our first visit to the fair many years ago, we were especially enthralled by a poster put up by a child, age 10, about how to be a good shepherd. The poster listed all the steps that a good shepherd does to care for his sheep properly. The final item was “Docks the tails.”

This brought tears to my eyes. Can’t you just imagine a child being absolutely horrified when told he has to clip his lambs’ tails—until he learns the reason why (to prevent the tails from becoming encrusted with fecal matter)? And I can imagine him still having trouble actually doing the docking, even though he knows he has to, for the sheep’s sake.

This year we saw a young girl stretched out on the hay in a pen next to her reclining llama. (The llama was longer than she was.) One adolescent girl, while fondling her goat’s head, told us that this goat is “super sweet.” Everywhere we saw kids petting, nuzzling, grooming, and talking to their animals.

The signs and posters that the kids make to accompany their animals show how much they’ve learned from raising them. Here are three nuggets of knowledge I learned in the animal barns this year.

Nugget #1

Nugget #2

*Nugget #3