4-H

The 4-H Ag fair has come and gone.  If you missed it, make sure you mark it on your calendars now for next year!  What a great treat for the families of Carroll County to gather and celebrate all things agricultural for our area.  This is a C A P T U R E D tribute to all the farm families of Carroll County who make Carroll County such a wonderful place to live and raise your family! 

My family has gone every year since we started having children.  We will never forget the year a goat started eating my hair while i was making sure my twins were secure in their double stroller!  Another year a giant hog who was being moved into a new pen, broke loose and started racing through the stalled areas!  Good times we still laugh about today!

This year I took my boys when the Clovers would be walking their pets in the pet parade.  We were excited to be there to cheer on our dear friends Abby and Becca Wimmer and catch a few photos of the them in the arena.  The Wimmer girls would be walking their pony, Rainbow and their new baby donkey, Ralphie.   Since they were near the end of the parade, I quickly decided to snap a photo of each child passing so they’d be able to see themselves in the pet parade and share this in a blog for all our local families. 

The fair is filled with so much for a family to see and do in an afternoon.  Here’s just a snippet of what I could C A P T U R E that day with my boys!  Tractor races…

Something tells me this gentlemen never misses the fair and has a lot of great fair stories to share!

Becca Wimmer with Rainbow.

P R E C I O U S !!!

Cards to pass the long days at the fair…

This little sweet pea caught my eye while my boys and I navigated through the penned areas….what a perfect moment of childhood farm life—playing in the straw with a water bottle, while hiding behind a wheel barrow.

Many a non-farm kid learns the week of the fair—‘So that’s where milk comes from!’

These two farm cuties cracked us up in the Pet Parade because their goat, Fregly, was proving very stubborn!  Come to think of it, I think all the goats conferenced before the parade because they all gave their pint size owners a run for their money walking the loop! I always thought the expression was ‘stubborn as a mule’—I think stubborn as a goat applies equally well!

Josie Dell’s goat was in on the goat conspiracy to give the owners a run for their money while walking the loop!  It was so cool to see these little tiny farm girls not give up or throw up their hands in frustration!  They just kept walking/pushing/cajoling/lifting tails—whatever they had to do to get their animal around the loop!  Josie’s got the muscles to show her goat who’s boss!

Abby Wimmer with her new baby donkey, Ralphie!  Those who follow C A P T U R E D blogs may remember the Wimmer family farm photo session in the spring.  Ralphie’s mother was rolling around like she was ready to give birth any minute, which we were all hoping for….but alas, they were just false labor pains so no live birth was photographed! 

After the Clovers walked their pets in the parade, the small pet costume contest was up next! 

This little rabbit, Stormy, holds a special place in the hearts of my family.  Two years ago April Burnett, (or as lots of Willie children in the county know her, Mrs. Burnett)  was frantic to save Stormy’s life.  Stormy had been very sick and was doing horribly.  Since she wouldn’t eat, her vet suggested trying carrot top greens and fine baby lettuces.  She searched the county grocery stores and was coming up dry.  Panic set in.  She left Food Lion parking lot and walked right by my family van which she was able to identify because we still had an old Wild Cats bumpber sticker “The DiDio boys” on the back.  I kept forgetting to scrape it off and now even today hesitate to do so and you’re about to learn why! 

April remembered when she had my oldest son Tad in class he wrote about our family garden.  During conference time we had chatted about gardens and shared some produce with her.  She wondered if by chance we might be growing carrots and have greens to help save Stormy’s life.  She raced back into Food Lion, found us and low and behold, we did!  This was the only year we grew carrots and I can’t tell you why we decided to that year, except that God must have had plans to save a cherished pet’s life!  Stormy ate the baby produce from our garden when she would eat nothing else.  We sent carrot tops and baby greens into Stormy until she was nursed back to health!  She passed the blockage she was experiencing and made a full recovery!  That was the day we learned that God can use left over bumper stickers to answer the prayers of His people!

Angry Birds:

Authentic blue grass music filled the air! 

The fair grounds parking lot is filled with ….

and

Tractors—the bigger, the better!  One of my boys favorite parts of the fair has always been the bumpy tractor rides!

If you’ve been to the fair you know about the Pig Races an event highly anticipated by most of the children!   The pigs race for Oreos and this year they added some racing geese who run for the love of running!

Wonder how many kids leave pig races asking for a pig for a pet?

Thank you again to all our farmers of Carroll County—I think of you with gratitude every day I drive around our beautiful county and am grateful that you persevere in the struggle to keep farming a thriving venture!