A Summer of 4-H projects

Lydia has been a busy girl this summer with all her 4-H projects.  She has been raising pigs to show and sell at the fair, a heifer to show, baking with some of her friends in a club, and working on an individual sewing project that she's going to enter.  She loves doing all these things and has really stepped up and taken great care and responsibility of her animals.  She checks on her pigs several times a day and her heifer follows her like a little puppy dog.  The fair will be in two weeks and I think she's ready.  All these projects means 4 record books to fill out, which means 4 stories to write.  She also has had to give 4 demonstrations. She definitely has worked hard!

getting her pigs out to walk them

leading her heifer (in flip flops...yikes!)

For her heifer demonstration she showed how to fill out a Certificate of Registration for her heifer.  Our main operation is focused on production dairy, but we also have a lot of registered cattle.  Greg has been teaching Lydia about these cows and explaining their genomics and all that is involved with them.  She is really enjoying learning about this aspect of dairy farming.  She says when she grows up she wants to be involved with the registered cattle and she hopes she can pick good genomics as well as her dad! ;)

I've even been told that Lydia loves to discuss cows with her friends.  The other day on the way to gymnastics she was telling them all about their reproductive systems and how we pick certain bulls to breed to certain cows.  Brittany (the mom driving the girls to gymnastics) said that she was even asking them true or false questions about cows.  One of the questions was:  "True or False, cows produce more milk when listening to classical music?"  and I'm sure after getting blank, uninterested stares from her friends, she said "It's false and it's a good thing cause our cows only listen to Mexican music."

Oh my, I love this girl!  Probably because she is SO her father's daughter!