All Year for One Weekend: How 4-H Youth Bring the County Fair to Life

The sun is barely up, and already the Gila County Fairgrounds are humming with activity. A teenager clips down the hair of a nervous steer. The scent of hay and livestock mixes with the morning air, the anticipation thick. For hundreds of kids involved in 4-H, this is what they’ve been preparing for all year.

From gardening and fiber arts to reptiles, poultry, goats, and steers, these young competitors have spent months caring for animals, planting seeds, preserving vegetables, and learning the fine points of showmanship. Now, they’re preparing to show it all at the Gila County Fair, running this year September 17–20. 

One could argue this is a rite of passage in a rural community.

4-H is the nation’s largest youth development program, engaging kids from ages 5 to 18. In Gila County alone, there are 18 active clubs that cover everything from robotics and shooting sports to livestock, cooking, and agriculture, all of which are focused on the 4 H’s of 4-H. 

“It's head, health, heart, hands,” explains Erin Sanders, leader of two local clubs—Farm to Table and Buddies (4-H Cloverbuds), the latter of which introduces younger kids to the world of 4-H, allowing them to participate in the fair without formally competing. 

Pictured (l-r): James Sanders won reserve champion last year for showmanship in junior poultry. Photo provided by Erin Sanders. Trini Hurtado’s daughter, a Farm to Table club member, harvests chilis from the garden. Photo by Jenn Walker. Allison Wagner competes with her goat for showmanship. Photo provided by Kristina Mikeworth[/caption]

For Sanders, who learned how to grow food from her grandfather and great-grandfather, 4-H is a passion she shares with her family. Under her guidance, along with the guidance of co-leader Trini Hurtado, the Farm to Table club has been growing and harvesting produce from their garden at the Gila County Food Bank and learning to preserve it—canning pineapple zucchini, pesto, spaghetti sauces, and salsa. It’s a hands-on lesson in self-sufficiency. 

The club has been involved in every aspect—they built the garden beds, filled them with soil, planted seeds, watered, harvested, and canned everything. 

“These 10, 11 kids that we have this year have built all of this,” Hurtado says, looking around the garden.

The 4-H year kicks off in January. From then until September, members attend club meetings, track their progress in record books, pursue their projects, and prepare for the fair.

Mia Wagner and her sister Allison Wagner, club members of Outlaw Livestock, work with animals year-round. 4-H members working with livestock are expected to work with their animals daily. 

Mia spends at least four hours each week with her sheep—not including the time she spends traveling to up to 10 shows around the state a year, a large part of her training process for the fair. 

For these sisters, livestock is a lifestyle passed down through their family. Their mother, Kristina Mikeworth, has been leading Outlaw Livestock for two decades, which was started by her family more than 30 years ago. 

“I bought their first animal, their first feed for them,” Mikeworth says of her daughters. “After that, it was their responsibility if they wanted to continue to do it or spend their money.” 

Budgeting is a lesson 4-H teaches early. 

“My first daughter, she was $900 in debt her first month,” she adds.

And it’s not just about feeding and grooming. Kids study animal nutrition and illnesses, grooming techniques, and even how to trim hooves.

Pictured, left: 4-H club member James Sanders works with his goat in preparation for the fair. Pictured, right: 4-H club member Garrett Gregory works with his goat. Photos provided by Erin Sanders

“The kids won't necessarily see these things on their own even if they're taking good care of their goats,” says Karen Donaldson, who leads “We’re Those Kids,” a club that focuses on goats and fiber arts. (She is also co-leader of the Gila Monster League, a reptile club in its second year.)

Most recently, she’s been working with We're Those Kids on trimming goats’ hooves, ever since she saw one of the club goats with overgrown hooves. 

“It will cause problems if we don't deal with this,” she says. “We started on trimming this goat's hooves, and every week now, we'll look at this goat's hooves to get them trimmed correctly. That way, by fair time, she'll be standing on her toes like she's supposed to.”

Kids also prepare their animals for showmanship—training them to walk on a leash, stand still, and respond to subtle cues. 

“I started right off this year teaching them to get their goats to follow them for fun. No collar,” says Donaldson. “Just carry around some treats in a little coffee can and rattle it and get your goat's attention.”

Whether showing a rabbit or a steer, kids are judged on their ability both to present and care for their animal. There’s showmanship, and then there’s the animal’s quality, explains Sanders. 

“You might have a beautiful looking bird,” she says. “But if your meat and your fat ratios are off, you know, the judge is going to know that.”

Poultry kids learn how to hold and flip turkeys or chickens so judges can inspect them. Steer kids must guide their animals with confidence and control. 

“It’s nerve-wracking,” Mia admits. “The competition and just the whole showmanship aspect, and everybody there watching.”

There may be more than 50 animals in any given round. 

“We have to try to win against all of them, and we have to go in multiple times,” Allison says.

Allison Wagner won reserve champion last year for showmanship in the junior goat category at the county fair. Photo provided by Kristina Mikeworth

If a student wins showmanship, they’re invited to Round Robin—a contest where they must demonstrate showmanship with various animals, including animals they may have never handled before.

One year, a small boy won rabbit showmanship and then had to show a steer in Round Robin, which he wasn't familiar with. 

The 1,200-pound steer, though it was gentle, got nervous and stepped sideways, lifting the boy off the ground, pinning the boy between him and the fence.

“Isaac didn't let go. Isaac stayed calm,” Donaldson recalls. 

That was her son.

During the fair, it’s common to see steer kids learning from Cloverbuds how to hold a chicken properly, or poultry kids learning to lead a pig. 

“So they exchange information,” Sanders says. “You know, it takes two different kids from two different worlds and it crosses them over.”

In the days leading up to the fair, families camp out in RVs near the barns. Trailers haul animals, feed, tools, and supplies. Kids are up before dawn, grooming animals, cleaning stalls, and preparing for the long weekend.

“The days of the show, those are crazy days,” Donaldson says. “You've got 100 kids out there and their families in that little tiny space, grooming and bathing pigs, grooming steers with the blow dryers and fluffing the steers up, trimming the sheep and goats one last time and bathing them and keeping slinkies on them so they stay clean.”  

Sometimes a goat gets loose and the kids have to work together to catch it. 

And it’s not just about livestock. Farm to Table kids enter their canned goods and vegetables in judged competitions. Judges taste-test pickles and pesto to determine which young chef is the winner.

One night, everyone gathers for Old-Fashioned Fair Night, a major fundraiser. Families donate everything from homemade quilts and sofa blankets to chocolate pies and grills for prize-winning raffles. Proceeds fund various scholarships, from $500 scholarships for graduating seniors to $100 summer camp stipends.

“This is our one and only opportunity as a program to raise the money to cover scholarships,” says Donaldson. 

And, it’s open to the public—even the pie-eating contest.

While the fair provides entertainment and competition, the deeper lessons for 4-H kids are about responsibility, discipline, and confidence that have been developed throughout the year, from early mornings, budgeting, feeding, cleaning, and accurate record-keeping. 

These responsibilities are all the more present during the fair. 

“Those children are responsible for their stall, their cleanliness every day. They get up, crack of dawn, they're feeding, watering, changing shavings,” Sanders says. “You might walk through the barn and not see a kid in sight. But if it's clean, guaranteed it was them.”

“Because the parents are actually not allowed to do it,” she adds. “If they're caught doing it, the kids are the ones that get docked… If you show really well in your show, but that judge realizes you don't take care of your animal, that costs a buckle for you.”

4-H club members James Sanders, Wyatt Gregory, Garrett Gregory, and Kaydin Sanders speak to a judge about their poultry behind the scenes Photo provided by Erin Sanders

Behind the scenes, 4-H members develop people-skills, talking to judges, interacting with and informing buyers.

“They're learning life skills and they don't even realize it,” Sanders says. 

Fair week also brings kids from across different schools and backgrounds together. 

“They might not hang out at school, ever,” Sanders says, “but during the fair, they’re the bunny barn kids.”

“And they hang out and they want pictures together. And they ride bikes together. And they're helping each other out,” she adds. 

4-H also builds resilience. “You're not going to place well every time you show,” Mia says. 

Humility is key.

Back in January, Farm to Table kids mapped their garden plots and generously scattered flower seeds between rows of vegetables when it came time to plant. They’d learned about bees and pollination. 

“It's agriculture at its finest,” Sander says. “The kids are learning the basis of the life cycle of the plants.”

“This is a livelihood,” she adds.

That connection—from planting to harvest, from feeding livestock to sales—is what drives 4-H. 

As Mikeworth puts it: “It’s all hands-on and you’re doing it as you go. You’re not sitting in a classroom. This is a life skill that you'll remember for the rest of your life.”

And come fair time, all that work—every garden diagram, every 5 a.m. feeding, every canned jar of pickles—comes together under the lights of the fairgrounds.

For one weekend in September, the whole community sees what these kids have accomplished. And then, they’ll start all over again.

Produce from the Farm to Table garden at Gila County Food Bank.