923 lbs and you're an "also ran" ?!?

Since we're on vacation this week, we took a trip to the Canfield Fair in Mahoning County, OH today. http://www.canfieldfair.com/ One of the must see items at the fair is the "Largest Squash" competion. The 3rd heaviest Hungarian squash ends up on the porch outside of the building with all of the other "also rans" .......... imagine raising a 923# monster and being relegated to 3rd place. That said, here is a look at the King & Queen squashes for 2008.

Zoom in on the second picture to see the winning weights increasing over the years!

BTW, it takes a while to get any kind of picture, since folks are in a line streaming by constantly. The building is also manned so that they can answer questions and keep watch over the squash royalty.

Interested in trying this at home?

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1646.html for "research-based information" - ho-hum.

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/ for a fun site!

http://www.howarddill.com/ hey, this is serious stuff!

Finally ...... RAIN!

After a month of virtually no rain, we finally got 8/10th's of an inch in the last 24 hours. No downpours, so that's a good thing!

Horsing Around

Change of subject! Maybe not the greatest photography (no one wanted to stand still!), but check out these pictures. We visited my friend Carol in Greene County today and finally got a chance to see some of their horses --- Greene Meade Belgians of Waynesburg, PA. The show string just returned from Indiana. The mares and foals turned out in the pasture were mildly curious, but you could tell that they knew we weren't the ones who fed them. Just like the sheep here, curiosity turns to boredom once you don't provide food!

http://www.greenemeade.com/ Look at 2008 foals video on the web-site!

I should have stood near them to show how big they are ..... I'm always impressed by how broad and deep the chests are on draft horses.

Mining manure

Yep - it's another exciting day at Wild Rose Farm! We're on vacation this week and it's one of those "stay-cations"! We're getting caught up on yard work, weeding, pruning, etc. One of the "etc." jobs is digging out & spreading manure from the area where we fed the round bales of hay to the sheep over the winter. Whew --- it smells like a farm around here right now. The manure is being spread on areas where we're going to disk and do some pasture renovation seeding. We bought some hay/pasture seed yesterday and I'd like to get it spread before it rains. It actually looks like there is rain in the forecast!

Here's the "demo" fleece .....

Here is a shot of the fleece that was tied up in the "demo" blog before the fair. This fleece from ewe #103 placed first in it's class of 5 Dorset fleeces. This particular ewe has had the 1st place fleece in her class for several years. It's a classic Dorset fleece. The 2nd place fleece above it comes from our #108 Dorset ewe and is a finer micron fleece ...... also not quite as heavy.

Fleeces & Ribbons

Friday arrived and the 5 fleeces have been judged at the fair .....
Here is a picture of our Reserve Grand Champion fleece from our Dorset x Rambouillet x-bred ewe #29.

The results are:

Rambouillet - 1st place in class.

Dorset - 1st & 2nd places in class.

Commercial - 1st & 2nd places in class and Reserve Grand Champion fleece at the fair!

The Reserve Grand Champion fleece has been judged to be the "second best fleece" in the entire show of approximately 30 fleeces. Yea! I really liked this fleece when I tied it up last Sunday. I guess the judge liked it too.

A couple of things about fleece judging ...... the fleeces of each breed are judged against the breeds' wool standard and against each other. Judges are looking for breed character, staple length, crimp, total fleece weight, freedom from "wool breaks", handle, etc. The judge may actually untie or open the fleece to check it for uniformity and to ensure that a heavy weight fleece is not full of dung tags or scrap wool in the middle. Sad but true ---- "if there's money or a prize involved, someone will cheat"! For the record, 1st place premiums are $8, 2nd place premiums are $7, and the Reserve Grand Champion prize is the Rosette. Heck, it buys a little hay for the flock.

Still no rain here

It continues to be dry here ..... when will one of those tropical storms swing our way and drop some showers? It's time to get the grass growing for the fall.