Hogging the spotlight
Anyone having doubts about today’s youth need only visit the Spokane Fair and Expo Center this week to be proven wrong.
There, amid the smell of fresh cedar shavings and the sounds of lowing cattle, bleating sheep and squealing pigs, 600 kids from grades three to 12 are waking up at 6 a.m. and going to bed at midnight. Almost every moment between is dedicated to preparing their livestock for judging, cleaning work areas and learning during the Junior Livestock Show of Spokane.
“It’s a lot more than bringing a hog to the show,” said Treva Norris, executive director for Junior Show, which is now in its 70th year. “It’s the building of character. The show is such a good opportunity for young people.”
On a perfect-temperature Wednesday, a third-grader blow-dried an enormous steer twice her height for an hour. A boy, dressed in rain gear, shared a steel cage with a hog as he tried to wash the squealing beast. A team of 4-H members hung signs above a row of pens, only to discover their sheep found a way to stand higher and tear down the posters. Here, parents are expressly forbidden from doing the work, and youngsters take on adult responsibilities.
Men with handlebar mustaches and cowboy hats talked to high-schoolers wearing baseball caps and sneakers about the price per pound for beef this weekend, and tours of preschool children wandered the clean-swept aisles pointing at the animals.
Barely taller than the hog pens surrounding her, and holding a large push broom, 10-year-old Jessica Magers swept cedar shavings away from the fronts of the Greenacres 4-H Club pens. She bought her pigs in January and has been up every morning feeding them ever since.
“The best part is getting to spend time with them,” she said of her two hogs, weighing 262 and 266 pounds, named Petunia and Zelda. Last year, Magers won the Grand Champion award in her division for Fitting and Showing techniques, which involves the 68-pound-girl washing and trimming an animal four times heavier than she, and then displaying it before a judge.
While proud of that award, the end result for Magers’ animals was the same as it is for all the livestock at the Junior Show. All animals – from the champion steer to the lamb that was a best friend for months – go up for sale at the end of the show. Months of hard work are auctioned in front of a crowd, then put on a truck for the meat-packing plant.
It’s Magers’ third year at the show, and she’s cried both times before when she sold her hogs. Will she do it again?
Sheepishly, she said, “Yeah,” but soon followed with a quick, “I hope not, though.”
Included on most young people’s schedules are hours of “pen duty,” when aisles are swept spotlessly clean and pens are tidied. Different clubs compete for the best-kept pen areas.
Representing Waitsburg, Wash., Brad Grende, a high school senior and Future Farmers of America member, knows that the show offers a chance to learn – and a chance to get out of learning.
“If I’m here for a while, I’m not in school,” Grende joked while seated on a fence, keeping watch over his animal as part of his pen duty. He looks forward to the show each year to meet other people and to fulfill his hobby of showing steers.
“My grandpa got me hooked on steers,” he said. “I enjoyed being around them, and I enjoy showing them.”
Meanwhile, in a barn set aside for lambs, 13-year-old Christina Trepanier took a pair of large-bladed shears to her 95-pound lamb. The animal just made the weight requirements – the minimum is 95 pounds.
“Sometimes, they won’t eat, and they won’t gain,” said Trepanier, a member of the Country Pride 4-H Club in Pend Oreille County. “Some eat; some don’t.”
Tuesday was weigh-in day for Junior Show animals. Though most make it in, some are sent home, too small to compete. Others, like a pig that fell paralyzed during weigh-in this week, simply buckle under.
“Sometimes, you have hard moments,” Norris said. “Sometimes animals die. Sometimes they don’t make weight at the right time.”
But hard lessons are part of the experience, she said, speaking in front of a stack of trophies that will soon be distributed to a select few whose cards are all dealt right – and who know what to do with them. Young people who go through the show – both high points and low – learn things that serve them well later in life, she said.
“Our emphasis is on leadership, responsibility and lifetime skills,” she said. “It’s always great, and the kids are great.”