Gratitude on the Green Shavings
The North American International Livestock Exposition is “the largest purebred livestock event in the world, with 10 divisions and nearly 30,000 entries from 48 states,” according to their website. That includes cattle, hogs, goats, camelids, and sheep but it is regarded by many as the pinnacle of sheep shows. Louisville, what we in industry call the event, promises to bring out a lot of high-quality sheep. I’ll still say the Big E is of a higher caliber in terms of facilities and staff go but Louisville certainly has prestige. This one draws in sheep from all over the country. It’s the kind of show you send your one really good sheep to and keep home the one’s you know won’t stand the competition. Plenty of sheep arrive with someone other than their owner because *reality check* we can’t all take time away from off-farm work and farming to spend a week in Kentucky right before the holiday season. But if you have a really good one, you’ll make sure it gets to Louisville.
That’s how one of Colin’s ewes first wound up on the green shavings. (The show ring is always assembled with green shavings. It’s a thing.) Another sheep breeder had a look at Amy, a Border Leicester yearling ewe, and said she’s too good not to go. Colin made travel arrangements for her to get to the show and Amy brought home the Reserve Champion banner in the white Border Leicester show. That was years ago now with Colin hanging a few more banners since then and our attendance after forming Yankee Rock tapering off. Our Border Leicester flock is in a rebuilding phase and there’s no Finn show in Louisville.
Like good sheep, fitters and showmen are also shipped in for their contributions to the big event. Anyone with a little experience and the right tools can fit and show sheep but Louisville is the kind of show that solicits the experienced. To talk about networking, this is a stage with more behind-the-scenes contributors than a random onlooker can understand. The breeding, raising, fitting, and finally exhibiting can rack up a list of people who have gotten that sheep to the moment they’re ready to enter the ring. Critics of the showring call this “politics” and yeah, I can’t tell you no sheep has ever been moved up to first place thanks to friendly connections. And still, a poor-quality sheep doesn’t often win something it doesn’t deserve.
Colin and I both grew up pouring over sheep industry publications as know-nothing 4-H kids who stumbled into sheep projects on accident. Once inspired down the path of budding sheep enthusiasts, we became students of breed champion photos and the faces surrounding the sheep. Names of shepherds equivalent, in our eyes, to superstars and standout farms in the showring and otherwise were committed to memory. It all felt larger than life then. So, it’s a real shock to the system now that we’re asked to join the fun as fitters and showman.
We were hired to work up a flock of Border Leicesters for the show but walking through the barn last week it felt like we couldn’t get much done besides catching up with peers. Shearing clients, other Border Leicester breeders, other shearers, shepherds we know just from going to so many shows for as many years as we have. There are folks there who have watched us grow up and others we’ve grown up alongside. A sheep show is not exactly proportionate to a professional networking event my counterparts in more conventional careers might attend, but boy did I feel like a success. The sense of acceptance, earned status, or maybe it was appreciation emerged fully while showing with Colin the champion natural colored Border Leicester ewe in the supreme champion drive. I looked around the ring and saw so many people and sheep who I’ve sheared for, shown for, or just made an acquittance with. People I didn’t know from a photo in a magazine but had met in real life. We were standing among a line of people and sheep who not long ago I would have only looked upon in a magazine spread.
My self-importance isn’t too large. We’re still young, with a lot to learn and plenty of time to continue building a reputation as shearers and such. But I know we’re off to a good start down the right path and for that I’m grateful. That unshakable belonging is a feeling everyone deserves somewhere in their life, whether it be in a workplace or extracurricular activity or perhaps someplace that mixes the two, like a sheep show.