Summer Days At The Fair

Meet the Steffen family, Paula and her family are very dear friends of mine and this past week we spent a day working on some 4-H decorations for the stalls the dairy cattle would be shown in during the Cedar County Fair. The requirements were that the decor had to be something old, something you had at home, you couldn't BUY anything to use in your design, sooooo Paula knew just where she could find the old, rusty, extremely used junk to design this stall...

The recipe for the design was 4 milk cans, one with chalkboard paint, one garden gate, some gardeners burlap reused from graduation, 7 spindles, one broken headboard, swing set chain, old water faucets and door knobs, sand, chalk, some old rusty stars, stencils, we already had, some left over paint, and leftover chalkboard paint.

This is John and Paula with the four kids in the Steffen family that showed cattle. They own and operate "Steffview Dairy" at Hartington, Nebraska.

These were the stars of the show... John spends more time with these guys than he does his family, he gets up at 4 a.m. to start milking 300 cows, and then starts again at 4 p.m. for the evening milking. Dairy farming is not for the faint hearted.

This is some of the rest of the Steffen family, it's a family affair when it comes to the fair.

This is the youngest of the Steffen family, Keaten and Jordon, Keaton won a purple ribbon in the open class!

Here is the milk can creation, didn't it turn our adorable! Check out the spindles with the faucets and knobs. Very appropriate for a dairy cow!

Check out all the trophies, this is something to be proud of.....

This is the cool sign we made out of the broken headboard and swing set chain, I think the cows were admiring it....

Two boys on a fence.......... Keaton and Triston

Here is Keaton checking out the other kids washing their calves, a perfect end to a perfect day.

If your ever in the area come on over and check out the dairy, John will be happy to give you a tour, and probably feed you too, well, he will offer to feed you and Paula will do the cooking,

tell em Cammie sent you.

Cammie(: