I said in an earlier post that I would detail the Wine and Cheese event, Colorama sale, and the awards ceremony. Thanks to several fellow goat owners, Karen Smith and Greg Morris kindly allowed me to go into the Wine and Cheese room as they were setting up, so that I could get pictures of the entire process.

Here are some pictures

Today, I’m going to post two parts: this first part will be about the morning and afternoon before the wine and cheese event; we will post tonight detailing the wine and cheese event, Colorama sale, and awards ceremony.

We rested most of today, since none of us or our friends shows Nigerians. We did manage to get a few Nigerian pictures, though.

Here’s what we have:

Today, we woke up 30 minutes early (we usually wake up at 7:00). However, there was no rush to get our Alpines shaved. Our chaperone’s first doe showed in the 3 and under 4 class, which meant we would go into the show ring about 10:00, since each class takes roughly an hour (Alpine show started at 8:00).

I’m going to go off topic slightly, but it is really nice to have each class take a long time. I can watch the animals about 10 minutes after they enter the ring, go off and do some chores for 30 minutes, then come back and wait for the class to be placed.

Anyway, I didn’t have great expectations for my goat in the 7 and over class, Belle. I looked at the breed book and saw that there were only 18 animals entered in her class, so I figured at least I had to make the cut, and would probably get

Today was a slightly busier day for us. We watched our friend, Kiki Brackett, in the show ring with her Togg and Obes (she won a 1st place!) and helped our chaperon, Kris, prepare her goats. Then, we watched Kris win 1st place Alpine Junior Yearling, and watched all the rest of her dry goats make the cut. We also cleaned out our two pens. Later in the afternoon, we lugged our semen tank across the Expo center to pick up semen from two more people.

We didn’t get very many pictures from the Lamancha show, as we were busy watching our friends in the Obe show. I (Calvin) wandered around the vendor area taking pictures and checking out the milking stands, while Celeste clipped and bathed Kris’ goats.

Someone asked about where we sleep. Unlike most fairs, ADGA doesn’t care if you sleep in the barn, so most people do. Most people use cots, although others use air mattresses, and occasionally a tent. Electrical devices like crock pots, coffee pots, and other such “fire hazards” aren’t supposed to be used,

Today, (I know, we actually managed to catch up on our blog!) we relaxed. No videos, because as of this morning, I didn’t know if the videos were going to work out–so I didn’t take any. Instead, I took some pictures of some Togg, Saanen, and Obe classes, and managed to get a few National Champion lineups. We also went around and took more casual pictures, to let you see the general area and atmosphere of Nationals. The pictures with balloons are herds that have a Colorama sale animal. In some cases, not all these pictures are labeled as they are self-explanatory. First off, here are two pictures of the location we are posting all these pictures from–McDonalds. There is no WiFi at the Expo Center

Monday was the Nubian show. Not much else happened. There are so many Nubians that the ring was not split into two rings, just one big ring. Our doe, Sparkle, did not make the cut. Oh well, we’ll just have to breed a better animal for next time. Here is a video of the 5-6 year old class.

Video of the 5-6 year-old class here:

As you might have heard in our previous post, we won 5th place in the Fitting team competition. However, we decided that it would be better to post all the fitting team pictures in another post. Here they are (Please excuse the darkness, it is hard to get decent pictures in the show ring, and a friend who didn’t quite know the camera settings was taking pictures) No descriptions on any of these photos, because they are fairly self-explanatory. For those who don’t know the rules of the fitting team, we have 30 minutes to clip and fit an older kid. Judges watch us while we clip, evaluating how well we work together, how clean we keep the workspace, and to make sure we don’t take more than one of the goat’s legs off the ground at one time. Each team may consist of 2, 3, or 4 people. We had 3.  At the end of the 30 minutes, we have to stop whatever we are doing–even if we are in the middle of taking off our coveralls! Thus, we clip for about 25-28 minutes, and use the rest of the time to set up our display, and get ourselves arranged. The pictures of a 3-person team are of us, and the 4-people teams are other teams.

Today we woke up at 5:00am, showered, and finished prepping our showmanship animals.  Showmanship started at 8:00am sharp, with Calvin in ring 1 in Sr Showmanship and me in ring 2 in Int 2 showmanship.  Neither of us “made the cut”, but Calvin was one of the three Srs that received an honorable mention.  My class had around 34 contestants, and Calvin’s was in the low twenties.  One hour later, we were back in the ring doing the fitting contest, with Abby Ball as our third team member.  Our team, “Fit For Fame” placed 5^th!!!  We’re very happy, as in 2008 our goat wasn’t even finished being clipped when the 30 minutes were up.  Nubian milk-out was at 2:00pm and right after that, I started writing this post.

Sorry it took so long to post this.  We arrived at Gate 4 somewhere around 11:30pm, and spent the night sleeping on the asphalt.  Storm clouds grew, and just as the thunder and lightning started, we got a call from our chaperone, Kris, who said that gate 3 just opened.

I took these photos while we were fourth in line, waiting for check-in to open at 7:00am.  It poured the entire time, with the wind blowing gusts of rain everywhere.

Although we planned on heading off for Louisville at 7:00am, chores were slower than we expected and we left at 8:30.  Sparkle and Belle weren’t overly enthusiastic about getting in the van (again!) but they grudgingly obliged.

Things went smooth with no traffic, until we hit a toll booth that had at least 10 school busses in line.  Nevertheless, we waited our turn, then continued our trip.

At around 10:30am, Calvin was quite sleepy (he got off work at 11:30pm the night before) so we stopped at a rest area.  The girls were suspicious about all the cars and noise, but they were game and took a walk with me

Ooops, hope no one is watching! Sparkle, Belle, that isn’t your tree!

An hour later we hit the road again, eating lunch in the van and driving straight through ‘till the van needed fueled.   After dinner at 6:30pm at McDonalds, we continued our trip, with two hundred and fifty miles left to go.    Then we saw the storm clouds.

Uh Oh, we’d better find a spot to milk the girls!  I don’t think they’d appreciate getting milked in the rain…

We turned off the freeway at what seemed to be a deserted road, and headed down it.  Oh no!  Look at all the cars!  How are we going to find a private spot to dump the girls’ “biohazards” (milk)?

Someone already turned down this road, can’t go down it!

How about this road?  Umm, no.  Too busy.

We’re being trailed, those people must think we’re suspicious.  Us?  Suspicious?  We’re just crazy goat people!

Ah, finially an empty road.  Except for-

A cat.  Oh well, cats like milk anyway.

Once again, the girls hopped out of the van and stared around the place. Belle looked around with a shocked expression on her face, and seemed to say: “Mom, this doesn’t look like home, there’s too much corn and I don’t see any pasture.  Besides, we have dirt roads, not this weird black stuff!”

Calvin milked Belle,

Then I milked Sparkle.

After double-checking to make sure no one was on the road, we jogged the girls down for a big, then took them back at a run.

We loaded them and headed back down the freeway, only to find out that it turned and headed away from the storm clouds.  Oh well, at least the girls got milked…

And look! Only 226 miles left to Louisville.