A Small Victory

The Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival in Canby, Oregon is a highly anticipated event for fiber enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest. For the past few years, we’ve packed up a few of our beloved goats, and made the pilgrimage south to Canby in hopes of having a fun-filled weekend of socializing and showing off our finest animals and boxed Pygora fiber. In the past, we’ve done quite well in the presentation of our boxed fiber, and have been very pleased with our fiber show results. (My dear husband has declared this to be the result of my meticulous, and apparently annoying, habit of “primping”!). However, the highest our goats have placed in the show ring was 2nd…not too bad, but… I was ready to do better! The day prior to our departure, I spent several hours grooming my show kids in preparation for the BIG EVENT! Their fiber was blown out and brushed until they looked like angelic balls of super-soft fluff. Then, out came the tweezers! Nothing else I’ve tried works quite as well for picking out all those tiny little hay and straw seeds from that downy-soft fleece! All three kids looked beautiful. Now, if I could just keep them that way for the road trip. It was then that I decided to put sweatshirts on them to keep their fiber clean…and surprisingly it worked! After 8 hours of traveling on a bed of straw, my kids arrived and needed only minimal grooming before the show…a small success in itself. The following day, my first-born Cattail Meadows kid, who had now grown into a very handsome young buckling, placed first in his OFFF Junior Buckling class! I was ecstatic! For many, this would be considered a small victory… but for me, it was as good as an Olympic gold-medal win! I can’t wait till next year…