Semi View: The mad scramble pays off this week at the county fair

That means tomorrow, Wednesday, July 16, at 5:30 p.m., the doors to the Multipurpose Building will open and visitors will be treated to a wonderful display of clothing, crafts, baked goods and country-cured hams among the other exhibits that 4-H and FFA students have made this year.

The first time I ever saw that building of goodies was before I even had children and I was amazed and awed -- as I still am every year -- by the skills the children master at such young ages.

Back then, though, I had visions of the peaceful, happy days prior to the fair. Of mothers and daughters and sons calmly working in the kitchen to bake those picture-perfect cookies. Or fathers and their children putting the final touches on a wooden bookcase. All laughing together, quietly, cheerfully talking about the purple and blue ribbons they'll soon bring home.

But then we had children. And as Paul Harvey would say, "Now we know the rest of the story." (He says something like that.)

You see it is often quoted that children spend much of the year working on their projects for the fair -- and I believe some do.

I just don't know any of those children personally.

You see, in this busy world we live in, there seems to be fewer and fewer people volunteering to be 4-H project leaders. So without 4-H leaders who are organized and start projects early the parents sometimes supervise the projects. My husband and I (come on admit it, I'm describing you, too) are procrastinators when it comes to "projects." And well, we seemed to have passed that gene on to our children.

So except for the show calves that had to be broke by the March weigh-in, when our children were in 4-H, the projects usually didn't get started until, well Åc the 4th of July!

Of course with all that time before the fair check-in date, you know we patiently and calmly helped them with their projects!

In fact, I suspect if you went today (check-in is tonight) to most houses with 4-H kids, you'd see stacks of dirty dishes, mounds of burnt cookies, or a sewing machine strewn with failed attempts at a seam, ripper ready to redo and start again. And of course you'll hear lots of thoughtful encouragement from parents and happy chitter-chatter from children enjoying their learning experience.

Um, yeah, that's right!!

At our house, the week before the fair was (and still is, although they are in FFA now) worse than the week before a vacation. We are not only trying to catch up on our jobs so we can take some of fair week off, but in earlier years we were also being project leaders. It meant trimming hams, trimming calves' feet and trimming any project we could think of into something easier to do in a shorter amount of time.

In 4-H our children always took vegetable gardening as a project, so the afternoon of check-in (why start early?) we would go out ready to unearth those giant potatoes.

Knowing they needed to have five of "uniform size and color," we would dig the first hill. Every year (yes, I swear, every year) on the first hill, up came a potato the size of a basketball -- beautiful, scar free, a certain state fair winner.

"We only need four more. This will be easy boys," I would cheerfully exclaim every year. And every time, two hours and the entire garden later, we would have dug up every last potato, only to end up sorting out our not-so-prize winning, "uniform size and color" five potatoes the size of an egg -- not even a large egg!

Although the boys don't cure hams anymore, that used to be the easy job.

The last time we did hams, Hubby cheerfully pulled them down and the boys washed, scrubbed, trimmed and coated them with oil.

"Put them out in the breezeway," I said, "until it is time to go to check-in." Unfortunately, somebody forgot to let our border collie out of the breezeway when the ham went in. Well, needless to say, once a ham has 50 bites out of it, it is no longer ready for check-in!

But despite what happens before the fair, a funny thing always happens after the fair (and a week of recovery.)

I'll hear someone say, "I can't wait until next year's fair."

"No, neither can I," I'll hear myself reply. And I'll really mean it!

P.S. I hope you all get a chance to take in some of the exhibits, animals, food and attractions at this year's Saline County Fair. I think you'll enjoy it!