The day was humid, the sun was hot, but the young 4-H'ers didn't seem to mind.
While sheep ma-a-a-ahed and swine squealed in the holding pens in the huge polebarn, the 4-H'ers prepared to show off their goats.
Veronica Bates, a 10th grader who attends Padua Academy in Wilmington, assiduously brushed down her Nubian goat, Midnight, a five-year-old female, paying particular attention to Midnight's hooves.
Was Veronica nervous about the contest? Not at all.
"I've been showing for about eight years," she said, and she has won several times. A few minutes later, she and other youngsters paraded their goats in the straw-covered arena. After examining the goats from head to hoof, the judge, Heather Glennon, awarded Veronica blue ribbons for fitting - that is, grooming - the beast, and for showmanship.
The goat show was the first event Monday in the weeklong Chester County 4-H Fair, or roundup, as it's sometimes called, at the Romano 4-H Center on Route 322, about three miles north of Honey Brook.
During the week, there have been lamb shows, beef shows, swine shows, and a livestock sale. It isn't only farm stuff, though. In sheds on the hill there are displays of clothing and other textile items that the 4-H'ers have made, and exhibits on food and nutrition, photography, entomology, leadership development, and so on. One display is of notebooks, titled "My Future Is What I Make It," filled out by daughters of Mexican migrant workers, seventh and eighth graders at Kennett Middle School.
Nancy Doane, an adult volunteer, organized a display on good manners for a 4-H club called the East Brandywine Thunderbolts. She said she did it because "children just don't have good manners these days."
Standing nearby, Gabby Magann, 10, said, "It's true. Me and my friends burp out loud."
Nothing much is happening today, but tomorrow starting at 9:30 a.m. there's to be a big dairy show, and on Sunday the big horse show starts at 8 a.m.
The roundup is one of several 4-H fairs that have taken place or will take place around the Philadelphia area. Admission is free, but donations are gratefully accepted.
The fairs differ in duration and in some features, but all emphasize the aims of the 4-H program. It is, as Cheryl Fairbairn, Chester County Cooperative Extension livestock agent, put it, to "teach kids responsibility and the love of living things."
