Homestead Hodgepodge

Beef Show Edition

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Good Evening Steemlings!

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Let me take a moment here to shout it out, I DID IT!

Way back in January when I held my first 4-H market beef meeting, I asked my beeflings what they would like to do during our 4-H project year. The resounding chorus that hit me full force at the kitchen table was, "Have our own beef show!" They say that a sucker is born every day, I like to think of myself more as a Kit Kat bar....

Never one to want to disappoint hard working adolescents, I made a commitment to have a beef show on my place in July for my beeflings. Livestock shows require a few things, namely an arena and a judge, and as I didn't have those two things on hand, I definitely had my work cut out for me.

When the John Deere hat and sunglasses are donned it's usually work time!

The arena presented a bit of a logistical quandary. I've had the railroad ties in the ground for the arena corners for years. I have this perfectly flat pasture out on the southwest boundary of my farm that I have had dreams about having an arena in for years. It's close to the water and electricity at the barn too, and visions of nighttime barrel racing have danced around the edges of my irises for many moons.

However, lumber is expensive, especially the number of pressure treated posts needed for an arena, but I am a saver and there is a post mill just down the road from us that would sell them to me wholesale, Yay!

Fast forward to June, our flatbed trailer was pulled out into our pasture full of pressure treated posts. Soon, all of the posts were put in a 100 by 200 foot rectangle and I started to feel confident. Just maybe I could pull this beef show thing off.

The next financial obstacle was the required 222 1X6 boards needed for the railings. The economy is a touch on the hot side, especially the real estate and construction sectors, which of course means the price of lumber is just a tad on the north side of ridiculous. There was a budget justification combat match nightly in my cranium trying to crunch the numbers in a way that didn't cause my heart and/or pocket book to fail, when one evening our neighbor showed up unannounced.

Our neighbor, Bobcat Bob as I christened him years ago, has a sawmill. He also needed a wood deck for one of his flatbed trailers and wanted to buy a couple of fir logs off of us to mill into planks for his trailer. My brain jumped on this wooden opportunity faster than a beagle on a grounded cheeseburger at a BBQ.

"I'll give ya the tree if you mill me some 1X6's!"

Bobcat Bob broke into a big ol smile, as he is cheaper than the bark on a Jack Pine log, a personality trait that I admire. The next morning he received two export grade red fir logs and the following week he started bringing me loads of freshly cut 1X6's. Life was good.

Well, it was a little hot too, as my crew went out in the 90 plus degree heat to put the railings up on the arena. It was hot, dusty work, but by this last Tuesday evening, one whole railing was up around the arena, 600 linear feet worth of lumber.

We also got the arena rototilled. Our land is where the great Glacial Lake Missoula must have had a nice sandbar eddy in the wane of last ice age, because my ground is a silty pile. I prefer the silt over a rock patch like many around here have, but boy does the stuff dry out to a flour powder in the summer time. All day yesterday I watered that arena with sprinklers, hoping to cut the dust, for the beef show was to commence at seven last night.

Being a little lacking in the sanity department, we also scheduled my husband's final shooting sports meeting of the season and a BBQ along with the beef show. I mean, that sounds like fun right? A guest speaker, dinner, and a moooovie!
I did the math and anticipated about forty people would be at our home around six last night. Nope, my final count was 67! Thank goodness my meat freezer is full of beef!

A stupid amount of BBQ'd hamburgers and hot dogs later, I wandered over to the arena to check my show preparing beeflings. About twenty people followed me, as most of the shooting sports parents were intrigued by the 1300-1500lb animals that were parading around in my functional arena. It was the moment of truth.

This was how I looked in situ last night, a blur called Kat!

Guess what! Our event went smashing. Yes, there was a bit of dust, and right now most of North Idaho is gnat-topia, but, the kids had a blast, our guest judge that one of the beefling's mothers rounded up was amazing, and there were all around smiles beaming when people weren't picking gnats out of their teeth.

My girl and her Moo Bear did awesome!!

I also invented a new bug repellent on the spot, and will share the recipe with you all in a future post after more field testing. The stuff worked so good that one of the parents was slathering the concoction onto her arms. Most insect repellent is just that, repellent in every form of the world. I get that sometimes DEET is necessary, but you can't put any of that stuff on livestock. Heck, you can't even spray it were they eat! So I am pretty excited about the concoction.

Crazy Cora modeling how tired we all are...

All in all, last night was a success. We got plenty of thank yous, Facebook accolades, hugs, and appreciative text messages last evening about our efforts, so even though I am sitting here in a post event fugue of exhaustion, I am truly happy that my beeflings apprecitated our efforts. Sometimes, it is all worth it.

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And as almost always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's almost BBQ'd but still kickin iPhone.

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