And now back in Kentucky! annual 4H show photos!

post #300
      I'm always glad to be at the annual 4H livestock show and sale in Sandy Hook. It is usually too hot for me to stay for both the judging session at 3:30 and the auction at 6. But since it is a crowd who mostly knows me, or at least knows of me, it's totally fun to be taking photos WITH them, and not just as a stranger. I was sorry to miss the first afternoon of the show, which had chickens and rabbits. The next day were the cattle, goats and sheep, as the photos will show. I saw only one pig this year! As usual, I have tried to insert some story into this series of photos.

The 4H symbol: head, heart, hands and health

goat homes away from home

the bleachers and fans

Jayla is a senior in high school. She won several awards this year! Bravo!

Makayla as participant -  my congrats!!

It's wonderful to see the younger generation listening, learning, and showing their animals.

both judge and instructor, and host --

Family support seems always to be an important part of this big effort!

I suspect this toddler will one day also be a part of the 4H program, just like her half-sister. I love this photo.

I may be adding a few more photos soon, but I want to publish this much this afternoon. Enjoy! 

my unexpected Appalachia

post #252

from this afternoon, at the pond, unexpectedly

      On the way home from town last week, I had another unexpected sight. If I had not had my camera with me in the car.... and if there were not a spot to pull over, complete with a white bovine, who can show up the colors on her hide.... To me, such moments are always gifts.  Here are six shots, shown in consecutive order.  Had I been at my house, which is in a hollow, I would not have even seen this, or known to go seek it out.

      The next morning, there was fog, and visitors, and, yes, the leaves are beginning to change.

dogwood

     Happy change of seasons to all, and good luck with non-seasonally connected changes as well  -- and with whatever unexpected comes your way.

a brief side road - during six days in France

post #190
        I expected to wait until finishing the Route 32 photos before sharing my current trip, but I just can't.  I am eager instead to show at least a few of the photos from where I have been this past week.  I set off to visit my stepmother, who is British and lives in the Cotswolds, but I also had wanted to go again to France where I was an exchange student in high school, for a year.  I have been close to the family I lived with ever since -- which means for over 50 years.  I took a lot of trains from here in England to get to several places in France, but I love trains so it was a big treat -- a lot of work to figure it all out but nonetheless a treat.  It helps that I still speak fluent French, rusty though my vocabulary may be.  
        Now that I am back in England and have been reunited with my laptop, here are snaps I took during a wonderful walk in the country outside Mulhouse, in eastern France.  Maud, my French "sister," knows the hikes near her home very well.  I loved that we headed out to where she knew we would see some STORKS.  And we did!  Mulhouse is in Alsace which has always been famous for storks and for their nests perched high on some building.
      It was a beautiful few hours.  I hope the photos share my delight being with Maud in a new place on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

       This is the front door of Maud's house.  We drove not far from here to get to the area where she often hikes:

        We parked here, near a church and cemetery which face the Vosges Mountains nearby and the Black Forest in Germany across the plain of the Rhine River:

     We were soon walking along a system of dirt roads for the farmers in the area, surrounded by a variety of crops, mostly corn but including vineyards.  I have taken these photos to show to my neighbors back home who also farm.

woodpile art!

   We soon saw this apartment house with a nest -- and a family of storks!

   
 Another one in the area took off and flew over head before landing:

       There were other kinds of animals as well belonging to these farmers - or maybe a single farmer.  For me, it felt like a surprise around every corner.

bee hives

 Then, on the way back:

   J'ai de la chance, n'est-ce pas?  [I am fortunate, don't you think?]