Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Students Enjoy County Fair
EVENT TEACHES RESPONSIBILITY
FAYETTEVILLE — The benefits of showing animals at the Washington County Fair are many: learning responsibility, time management, meeting new people.
But for Eli Spinks of Lincoln, another reason trumps them all.
“Because it’s fun. It’s funner than being at school.”
Eli, 11, lives with his family on Spinks Farm in Lincoln and he attends Prairie Grove Middle School.
He has two younger brothers and all three were showing Jersey and Brown Swiss cows at the county fair last week. The boys are members of the Bethel Grove 4- H Club.
Eli has participated in the fair for five years and a lot of the time leading up the fair is spent preparing his cows for show.
“We have to clean and wash them, clip them, trim their hair to get them ready,” Eli said.
About 100 students from Farmington, Prairie Grove and Lincoln schools showed animals at the fair last week with their FFA programs. And countless other students and homeschool kids participated as members of their local 4-H clubs.
Autumn Gregg, 15, a member of Farmington High’s FFA club, has shown animals at the fair for 11 years.
Last week, she was trimming and cleaning an American Southdown sheep. To get the animal ready for competition, the sheep is sheared “all the way down,” trimmed and washed.
“You want it to have a little bit of top knot (on its head) but not all poofy,” she said.
Autumn gets up between 5-6 a.m. most days throughout the year to feed and water her livestock and make sure they are in good health. To Autumn, the work is worth it, as well as participating in the county fair.
“I think it gives me confidence to talk to whoever and it teaches me responsibility,” Autumn said.
In addition to the American Southdown sheep, Autumn was showing a total of 15 animals at the fair. Others were market lambs and market sheep.
Taylor Cunningham of Lincoln’s FFA club showed animals when she was 6 years old and is now getting back into it as a junior in high school.
One of the most important parts of showing livestock, Cunningham said, is learning to communicate with the animal.
“You have to get to know them,” she said.
Kevin Barenberg, an agriculture teacher at Lincoln High School, said Lincoln students were showing just about every livestock animal possible at the fair. These included market and breeding hogs, market and breeding beef, market and breeding sheep, meat and breeding goats, rabbits, broilers and turkeys.
“We have stuff in every barn,” Barenberg said.
It was the same with Farmington’s FFA students, said agriculture teacher Clayton Sallee, adding that Farmington students had animals in every livestock barn.
Sallee said Farmington FFA members are responsible for taking care of their own animals in preparing for the county fair.
“It teaches them life skills, responsibility, time management and money management. We just supervise but they are responsible for feeding and watering the animals and exercising them. We may make changes to that to help them,” Sallee said.
Haylie Dobbs, a member of Prairie Grove FFA, is showing two pigs, a Dark Cross and a Poland, and was just hanging out in the pen with her two pigs. She has only been showing at the fair for three years.
In ninth grade, her agriculture teacher called and said he had a pig she could show if she wanted to.
“We didn’t know what to do,” Haylie said. “So we built a pen and I showed it and I’ve been loving it ever since.”
Haylie said one of her favorite parts of the fair is the opportunity to meet students from other schools.
Conlee Meadors, a Farmington High sophomore, was busy all week. He was showing a Bore goat named Mali, 16 chickens, three turkeys and two rabbits. Meadors doesn’t live on a farm and keeps his animals at the FFA barn behind Folsom Elementary School.
During the summer, he said he spends two to three hours a day taking care of his livestock. He likes the experience, he said, because it “teaches you responsibility.”
His goat is his favorite animal at the fair but next year, he said he hopes to show a hog.