Misty in Maine: Skowhegan State Fair

It's that time of year again! Summer is getting ready to come to an end and Fall is just around the corner. That means FAIR time! Unlike most people, fair time for us is not JUST about the rides and checking out all the attractions! For us, fair time means getting chickens washed and dried and all pretty for the Poultry Show! Last year was the first time for the boys and I to enter some of our chickens. We enjoyed it quite a bit and decided to enter again this year! (Whats not to love?....Time with the family, money, cute animals, and we learn alot of interesting facts about different breeds of chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys!)

Anyways, this morning the family and I got up early (quarter to 6 for me and 6:30 for the boys), had breakfast, and headed out to get the chickens loaded into their crates and into the truck. All was going well until I realized a few of my chickens decided to have a party and go swimming in their water bowl. Now I have 5 soaked and dirty chickens. Argh! So much for their baths earlier this week! So we bring those few to the house and washed them up and gave them a quick blow dry. (Pictures on that later....Who knew you had to give chickens a bath???) LOL Now that all that is done we load into the truck and off we go. The chickens had to start going into their cages at 8:30. All the boys were super helpful! Austin supervised Andrew running around while Nick and Nathan helped me get all the chickens into their pens and got their food and water bowls filled! So now all we can do is wait for the judging! We scouted around to see what other breeds and types of chickens were there and then headed to get some groceries and then home!

This evening before dinner we decided to head back to the fair to check out the results! We did awesome! We got 11 First places, 11 Second Places, and 1 Third place! We did have two disqualifed for having the wrong types of combs.......hmmm. But all in all 23 placed out of 25 birds! They boys are thrilled! All together we earned $150.00!! The kids will each get their own individual check that they can chose to keep or deposit into their savings accounts. We have 5 fairs that we do and they only get to "keep" one check to spend and the rest goes to their savings, but they get to chose which check to keep. Good lesson for them to learn, or so I think. Our chickies will stay at the fair until Sunday when we have to pick them up. Then we'll have a few weeks until we will do this all again for the Clinton Fair.

Sooo......without further ado.......pictures!!