As Grace has begun to continuously nag me about updating the blog I finally will get around to doing it. So here it is, the blog update on my trip to the wonderful state of Pennsylvania and the All-American Dairy Show.
Well if you can recall at the beginning of the September my dairy judging team won a trip to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to the All-American Dairy Show held there. 2 weeks ago me, my 3 teammates, a coach and a teammates dad drove the 16 hours to Pennsylvania. We left friday night at 11:30 and arrived there around 3. That night we travelled to Gettysburg to look at the battlefields. Sunday morning we took 45 minutes to get to a farm that was 6 minutes from our hotel. We judging 3 classes with not enough time to judge them and ate a very nice lunch. That afternoon we travelled to Hershey and toured the chocolate plant. it was a very impressive mechanical tour. We then went to New Holland, which they told us was just a short drive, an hour and a half later we got there. But it was all worth it.
Monday morning, we woke up, ate our poptarts and set out for the judging contest. We ended up judging 10 classes of animals (which is a lot considering the most I've ever judged is six) and gave 4 sets of reasons (also a lot, but I ended up having too much time between sets and overmemorized). We went back to the hotel, watched friends, and were almost late to the awards. We ate a very nice dinner and waited to find out how we did. In the end, I was 1st in ayrshire (only ever judged ayrshires a handful of times in my life), our team was first in ayrshire, 3rd in brown swiss, and 1st in guernsey. Wouldn't you know that the 2 breeds we see the most often we did the worst in. We weren't in the top 5 for holstein or jersey. Individually, I was 5th overall and our team was 5th overall. Pretty good for a national contest. I was satisfied. We left at 5:30 from our hotel and arrived back to our coaches house around 9:30. I was home by 10.
Needless to say it was quite the experience, I definitely don't ever need to go on a van ride with an inconsiderate person who puts their seat back all the way the whole entire trip all 32 hours. It was fun to look at high quality cattle and to get to judge one last time for 4-H this year. Plus!! bonus showcase points next year! :)
It's sad though that I will never be able to judge FFA dairy again because last year I won, even though they didn't announce my name. I feel like i got chipped!! what's up with that?? well, enough of my ranting. Saturday we're in Madison, WI for national dairy quiz bowl. We'll see how that goes, hopefully well but no promises. Happy World Dairy Expo!! :)
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