09/01/2026
We took six head of cattle, two babies, and a three year old to Salem on Wednesday last week, and I wondered a few times what in the world we’d been thinking.
The cattle are home, my voice is about gone, there’s a trailer here and another down the road and then some to unpack, and all I can think about this morning as I reflect on the last week at Oregon State Fair is how grateful I am for the people and the experience.
Thank you to everyone who stopped to visit, came to watch a show, held my baby while I worked, asked questions, let me clip on your cattle, offered help, asked for help, and helped make it a week worth everything we put in to get there.
Sydney and Gracie make for a dang good crew. The Oregon Junior Shorthorn Association came leaps and bounds this year. And seeing so many shorthorns and the incredible people presenting and exhibiting them was pretty wonderful.
We hung up a few ribbons this week, watched Sydney’s kiddo get himself some hardware (his first, and that alone won the week), saw Gracie and Syd both step up to the plate and show how hard they’ve worked, I got the chance to show against the man who taught me what showmanship looks like, hauled a Charolais into and through the supreme bull drive, made new friends, reconnected with old ones, and spent a lot of time thinking about how absolutely, incredibly lucky I am for all of you. And then I lost my keys and delayed my entire group’s departure by at least two hours.
In all, you win some, you lose some, but this, this last week, it was a win.
Picture from Margaret Strang of the shorties waiting for breakfast, as I ran my phone out of storage on day one and have quite a limited picture stash from fair.