a sweet debut

I can't believe how fast those three days in Croswell flew by! I guess time flies when you are having fun, right? And that's exactly what we did at the HPSS's first fair of the summer - had a blast!

We pulled into Croswell, MI on Thursday July 9th and we were greeted by the Pioneer Sugar factory - How sweet is that? The towering "Pioneer" letters atop the factory looked out over the railroad tracks and fields upon fields of what Ryan and Christina had to assume were sugar beets. It was really quite fitting that we were pioneering the 2009 HPSS in Pioneer Town!

We quickly set up our tent upon arriving at the beautiful Croswell Fairgrounds, and we were really pleased with our location because we were right next to the dunk tank. Throughout our time at the fair, the dunk tank provided great entertainment, a cool splash every now and then, and worked as a great draw to fair-goers. Warning to future dunk-tank volunteers of Croswell: The girl's softball team can throw a very accurate hard ball!

There sure are a lot of future veterinarians in Croswell, and most of you already have a lot of great farm experience and are so knowledgable (we were really impressed)! You also have a great sense of humor. Some of our favorite quotes from Croswell include:

"That (the horse cyclops) looks like my uncle."

"The toy dinosaur inside the dog on that x-ray is definitely a Stegasaurus. I can tell, definitely."

"Wow, if he (my son) becomes a veterinarian then I will be the happiest mom in the world."

"I want to be a veterinarian when I grow up, and I am making a scrapbook page about this exhibit."

"This is, by far, the best thing at the fair!"

"It's really great to learn about this stuff, because people get so removed from their food source."

"The next time I show my chickens, I am going to tell the judge that chickens have nucleated red blood cells! That'll really blow him away!"

Our second day in Croswell was definitely the busiest. We talked to almost 250 of you! We had a feeling things were actually going a little TOO well . . . but the strong Croswell crosswinds of Lake Huron took care of that early Saturday morning. Our faithful tent simply could not handle the ferocity of the winds, and we found it in quite a mess and certainly not standing on Saturday.

Fortunately, Ryan and Christina are great repair people and had it standing again in no time (with the help of blue duct tape and a couple of zip ties). The fix probably isn't permanent but it made it through the rest of the very windy day . . . something our banners and very attractive signs (See a flea at 10 times normal size! Check out the horse cyclops! Heartworms! Count the puppies on a pregnant dog's x-ray!) couldn't manage to accomplish no matter how much we supported them.

All in all though, the debut of the HPSS 2009 in sugar town was certainly a sweet one! We hope to see a lot of you again at the Sanilac 4H Fair! Impress those judges with everything you learned about your animals!

Now it's time to get back on the road and ready for the Montcalm County Fair in Greenville! See you there tomorrow morning!