Pennlive – The doors to the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex hadn’t been locked behind the departing crowd before a whoop went up from a group of teenagers in the main cattle barn.
Patrick Leahy, 17, and Judd Erdman, 18, – both from Lebanon County – had jumped onto a show box and begun gyrating a mock-burlesque, as their friends hooted and made cat calls.
Emily Heilinger, 15, of Lebanon takes a snooze while her three Brown Swiss cows do the same during the Pennsylvania Farm Show. Having crawled into her sleeping bag around 11 p.m., Heilinger was up and milking the cows by 5 a.m.“When all the people leave, the party starts,” said Troy Longenecker, 20, of Annville.
That’s a bit of an overstatement. Dairy exhibitors continued to tend their cattle all around the boisterous little group, but there’s no question the atmosphere had relaxed.
Radios were turned up. Conversations were now peppered with bits of profanity. Younger exhibitors laughed and played.
It’s as if – when the daily throng of jostling visitors emptied from the cattle barns – everyone exhaled.
Unlike the visitors, the dairy exhibitors live at the Farm Show. What for others is an entertaining day or evening out is for them round-the-clock work.
The faces of farming
Throughout the day, all had been on their best behavior, aware that they were the face of agriculture for tens of thousands of people.
While the gates are open to the public, the dairy exhibitors know it’s their job not only to make sure their cows are presentable, but also to upend common stereotypes and misperceptions about farms and farming.
Abby Sterner, 15, and her brother Ethan, 10, both of Montgomery County, take advantage of the late night lack of crowds at the Farm Show to practice their showmanship.They’re well-educated. They’re professional. They’re essential to the economy of the state and the nation.
And they help feed us.
“It’s nice being able to educate the public,” said Lauren Nell, of Gettysburg, who did college homework on her laptop as she tended her Holsteins in the North East cattle barn.
Nell is studying early childhood and special education at Slippery Rock University. But like many others, she took a hiatus from winter break for the Farm Show.
It’s in her blood: she started showing cows for 4-H when she was 8 years old.
Educating the public takes many forms. That afternoon, Republican Sen. Richard Alloway walked one of Nell’s cows into the annual Legislative Dairy Showmanship contest, in which state lawmakers attempt to do in the show ring what their young constituents do.
It’s not easy.
Dairy exhibitors sleep wherever they can, so long as they are close to their cows. As one explained, “Once you lay down, you’re out⦠That alarm goes off really early.”All the cows have been trained to step forward – or back up – at the tug of a halter, but there are rules governing how a cow should stand before a judge and special tricks to make sure she does so to her best advantage.
When a milking cow stands before a judge, she looks best if the hind leg toward the judge is placed slightly forward, and the other slightly back. If the judge walks around to her other side, her feet should be shifted accordingly.
Nell said Alloway has been showing her cows in the legislative contest for several years.
“It makes you realize how much people don’t know about showing,” she said.
To Alloway’s credit, he’s learning.
“He actually is getting better,” said Nell. “He was switching feet and everything.”
As Nell typed on her laptop, fellow exhibitor Jake Brake, of Franklin County, removed manure from behind nearby cows and forked it into a wheelbarrow. They weren’t Brake’s cows, but in this arena, neighbors look out for neighbors.
Katie Shultz, 21, of Dillsburg, prepares fresh, clean bedding for her cows. Keeping cows clean is a constant concern for dairy exhibitors during the Pennsylvania Farm Show.Meanwhile, a football sailed over both their heads.
Joe Murren, 20, of New Oxford, was “taking advantage of some uncrowded aisles” for a game of catch with Kendra Earl, 21, of Palmyra.
The hour or so after the crowds leave is the only down-time exhibitors regularly get; soon, the work begins again.
In the main barn, Leahy, Erdman and Longenecker were sashaying down the aisle, doing a dance with pitchforks, when a cow humped up and deposited a steaming plop onto the straw.
“You gonna dance and get the crap, or what?” Katie Donmoyer chided the boys.
The “party” was over.
The high whine of clippers cut through the low cacophony of other barn sounds as Jim Mapes, 20, of Mifflinburg, trimmed the shaggy winter coat off his father’s Brown Swiss.
Some pulled their cows to the wash rack for an evening scrub. Others scooped into feed sacks and broke open bales of alfalfa. Still others added sawdust and shaken straw as extra bedding for the stalls.
The routine had resumed.
Abby Sterner, 15, of Montgomery County, took the time to walk her four-year-old champion Brown Swiss slowly along the main corridor that is normally elbow-to-elbow with people during the day.
It provides some exercise for the cow, which has been tied up all week, she said.
It also provides both Sterner and the cow an opportunity to practice the showmanship drills they will have to use during competition at the end of the week.
She said the cow – a veteran of the show ring and blue ribbons – cooperates only “when she wants to.”
“She has the most attitude I’ve ever seen in a cow,” said Sterner.
The night watch
As midnight approached, the radios were turned down, the clippers were turned off, and the barns became more subdued.
Jim Mapes, 20, of Mifflinburg, gives his father’s cow a late night clipping during the Pennsylvania Farm Show.Most of the cows had bedded down and were either quietly chewing their cud or fast asleep.
Many of their owners followed suit.
Exhausted, the exhibitors collapsed on cots, on air mattresses, on bales of straw. One group brought a plush couch.
As Sterner prepared to go to sleep, she explained, “It’s a two-hour drive for us, so going home really isn’t an option.”
Sleeping in the barns eliminates the expense of a hotel and allows her to keep a close eye on the cows.
Nell agreed.
“I like being close to the cows in case something happens,” she said. “There have been times cows get caught in their ropes.”
Nathan Baumgardner, 20, of Dillsburg shuffles the deck for a late-night game of cards in the cow barns at the Pennsylvania Farm Show. The names of the cards games being played are unprintable. As one of his competitors said, “If (the game) has got a vulgar name, it’ll be played.”The Gettysburg veteran does not, however, sleep next to the cows.
“You can only lay beside a cow for so long before it gets up,” she said, and curling up on a bale of straw loses its novelty pretty quick.
Nell sleeps in the back hallway “where it’s dark, warm and quiet.”
“Once you lay down, you’re out.” she said. “That alarm goes off really early.”
But the barns never fully go to sleep.
Somewhere, amid the rustling of sleeping bags and the snoring, someone is always keeping a watchful eye.
Not far from his two Ayreshires, 20-year-old Nathan Baumgardner, of Dillsburg, shuffles cards.
Several aisles away, first-time exhibitor Madelyn Swetlock, 14, of Lebanon County, is on late night “poop duty” with several friends.
First-time dairy exhibitor, Madelyn Swetlock, 14, of Lebanon County, sits vigil during late night “poop duty” at the Pennsylvania Farm Show. Exhibitors work hard to keep their cows clean, which includes removing manure as soon as it hits the straw. “If their tails pop up, you’d better start running,” she said.“If their tails pop up, you’d better start running,” she said. If a cow were to lay in it, it makes washing it in the morning all the more onerous.
An early start
The watchful quiet lasts only a few hours.
Sometime around 4 a.m. the alarm next to Nell’s ear and others begin to go off.
It’s time to start milking.
Bleary-eyed exhibitors plod their cows to the milking station. Others begin mucking out whatever may have fouled the straw in the night. The aisles become a thoroughfare of wheelbarrows.
The sound of splashing water echoes in the indoor wash rack.
A rooster crows in the darkened barn next door.
The day has begun.
Within an hour, the barns are alive with activity. The cows are 10-deep in the milking parlor, and Nell is working alone.
Lauren Nell, of Gettysburg, is milking her cows by 5 a.m. “That alarm goes off really early,” she said. Nell, who has been showing cows since she was 8 years old, values the few hours of sleep she gets during the Farm Show, so she steals off to sleep in a back hallway, “where it’s dark, warm and quiet.”“My sister-in-law went into labor tonight,” she said. But she’s not worried about handling the chores by herself: “There’s always people to help.”
In a few hours, the doors will open, and thousands of people will begin streaming in to experience the sights and sounds of the Farm Show.
The exhibitors will be ready.
Even the youngest have been doing this at county fairs and regional competitions for months.
It began in March for Abby Sterner.
“I start walking them more, giving them baths, keeping them clean,” she said. “I start showing in June, and show them all the way through September. Then we have a little break before coming here, but it’s pretty much all year long.”
Her reasons for doing it are like most of the others.
“I just like being with the cows,” she said. “It’s fun to show them, even though it’s a lot of work… and it’s nice to win.”
