Fair brings out inner cowgirl

I have a confession to make: There is something you do not know about me.

During the third week of August each year something happens to me. I dig out my Montana Silversmiths belt buckle, unearth my Wranglers usually reserved as "work" jeans and hose down my boots.

Yes, you guessed it, my inner farm/cowgirl comes out.

For those who are used to seeing me in running shoes with a camera and notebook wandering the sidelines of football games and volleyball matches, it is a surprise to run across me haunting the sheep, swine and cattle barns where I used to spend my time as a kid.

My appearance is stranger still for those in the office who are used to seeing me in mostly business casual attire — skirts, heels, a pair of slacks.

But during fair week, I am transformed into the less polished kid I have always been.

I will admit that I rarely enjoyed sinking into mud up to my knee or sitting on a tractor for 12 hours a day each summer, but I did enjoy being outside and seeing my working hours grow into something. That something was wheat, potatoes, popcorn or beans and, of course, my 4-H animals.

My mother was a 4-H'er and so my sister and I followed the tradition.

I began my 4-H showing years with California Whites, also known as white rabbits with red eyes. After a few years of envisioning a bag of Jelly Belly candy in the pocket of the rabbit judge as a way to train me to keep my eye on him during the show, I moved to a larger animal and began showing sheep.

While sheep posed more of a challenge for my desire to wrangle livestock, I made the last stop in large market livestock and began showing steers in high school.

My first effort was probably my best. It was a proud moment for me.

After a summer of regular work on the farm, a bruised thumb, a few stepped on toes and more than one dodged kick, I had trained an animal to walk sedately beside me, put his feet where I pushed them and generally be more like a puppy than a steer.

Those moments of showmanship and cattlewomanship are what come out during each Grant County Fair that I experience in Moses Lake. I am reminded of my stepped on toes and hours spent teaching an animal how to walk on a lead.

It is the one chance to exercise my farm kid during my regular working hours and I relish it.

There you have it. The truth. I am a farm girl who owns Wranglers, wears boots with various forms of mud and manure on them and shines up a belt buckle with engraving and a horse on it in preparation for the fair.

Pam Robel is the sports editor of the Columbia Basin Herald and a proud member of one of the many agriculturally minded families in the Columbia Basin. And she likes cows.