Megan Stewart
Despite being what Beef Superintendent Kari Holt described as a “learn-as-we-go kind of year,” Linn County 4-H Club members will still show and auction off their animals this week like usual.
The main difference, of course, is how.
“We’re still filtering how it will all turn out,” Holt said Monday, immediately following Gov. Kate Brown’s latest orders, which clamped down on gatherings a day before local 4-H’ers were to start their first competition at the Linn County Fairgrounds.
Participants, who typically would be engaging in an active week of showing and then auctioning off their livestock projects, are scheduled for a limited and highly restrictive show schedule, with an online auction running simultaneously.
The fairgrounds will host the competitions and their 250 participants over the course of three days, starting Tuesday, July 14 and ending Thursday, July 16. The auction, which went live on Monday, July 13, at 6 p.m., is completely virtual and mimics eBay’s style. The auction website, at auction.showorks.cloud/fair/linnco, will include pictures and bios of each participant and their animals. The auction will close at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 18 – about the time the normal auction winds down.
The animal rankings will be updated on the auction website as soon the results for each competition are decided. All the results will be in by Thursday.
A lamb that had been raised by Shelby Simonis will also be available for purchase in the auction. She and her older brother Caleb died May 23 from injuries they received in a car crash that also severely injured their sister, Kylee Simonis. All proceeds from the lamb will go toward a scholarship named in their honor.
Like the weigh-ins that occurred on Saturday, July 11, the competitions will still take place live at the Linn County Fairgrounds, but under social distancing protocol. Each participant is only allowed two adults in attendance, but a livestream will also be made available to absent family and friends. Due to privacy restrictions, as many of the participants are below the age of 12, the Zoom link will not be available to the public. Additionally, each competitor may only show one animal, unlike the traditional two.
The meat goats and steer competitions occurred on Tuesday, with goat exhibitors presenting at 10 a.m. and the steer exhibitors at 5 p.m. Sheep exhibitors will walk their lambs around the course on Wednesday, beginning at 10 a.m. Finally, swine exhibitors will get their chance to show off their swine on Thursday, starting at 9 a.m.
An “in-and-out situation,” the children will head home as soon as they finish competing, 4-H Outreach Coordinator Andrea Leao said.
About half of participants will present their animals live and the other half on pre-recorded video they have submitted. Each contestant was also required to film a 60- to 90-second introduction video of their animals, from the angles at which the judges would normally examine them in-person.
On Friday, July 17, starting at 4 p.m., the auction committee will formally announce the winners and their animals, as well as read off their bios via a YouTube livestream.
Leao described the 4-H experience this year as “stressful.” She estimated the auction committee, of which she is a part, has worked three times as hard as they normally would in a regular year.
“We’re just trying to fit the needs of everybody,” she said, adding that they worked hard to make the whole situation “equitable” for the kids.