30 Days of Ranch Memories - Saying Good-bye

The more I get into my memory archive, I feel like I should have named this blog, "4-H memories" or "youth memories" but all these stories I'm sharing with you and they all stem from my childhood spent on ranches.  So please keep reading...

The above photo is called "Saying Goodbye" and my mom took it in 1983 at the Dawes County Fair Sale.  I was 10, and selling my first market animal.  This would eventually become a cover photo for a Sheep Magazine, and my mom later framed the picture for me.  It goes with me from house to house and state to state on every move.

Saying "good bye" to my market animals was never an easy task...Even in my last auction at Dawes County, when I was a sophomore in high school, I cried when I sold my steer.  Granted, he was a Hereford, and I raised him.  He was reserve Hereford steer and after the sale, I sat in the back pen of the sale barn and laid on him and cried.  No saying goodbye is never easy.  I fed him animal crackers (ironic?) and we shared a soda.  My dad had to come haul me out of that pen as the semi pulled up to load the market animals that fateful evening.

Fortunately for me, I had the opportunity to have 4-H projects that I could sell.  And fortunately for me, I had a mom that captured this awesome memory above.