Showing livestock at the State Fair: a generational tradition for extended “show families”
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Callie Henke’s friends ask her the point of showing livestock and why she wants to keep doing it.
Her answers are many.
“I do it for the experience, and you never know who you’re gonna meet and how long your friendships are gonna last,” said Callie, 14, a member of St. Joseph Parish in Salisbury and a third-generation cattle exhibitor.
“You can meet a lot of people,” she said. “You can go to a show and meet some of the best friends you’ll know for the rest of your life. And you get to see a lot of show-quality calves.”
Callie has been showing cattle at the Chariton County Fair since she was 5 and at the Missouri State Fair since she was 8 — as has her brother Dawson, age 10.
Their father, Paul Henke, started showing cattle over 40 years ago.
“It’s a family event,” said Mr. Henke. “Everybody’s involved in it: Mom, Dad, kids — everybody.”
He said it helps if you can cultivate friendships among fellow families who travel to exhibit livestock.
Darin Marek, also a member of the Salisbury parish, calls that a “show family.”
“We go back to our camper every night and eat supper as a family,” said Mr. Marek. “But you also have the show family — the people you meet in different towns, different counties, all over the state.”
“I’ve met all my best friends through showing livestock, through the agriculture industry,” said Mr. Marek’s daughter, Halley Marek, age 21.
She showed goats and cattle this year at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia as an FFA member for the last time before aging out of the program.
She and her older sisters own heifers that they planned to continue exhibiting in the open divisions for all ages.
Halley and her sisters, Kelsey Fuller, age 27, and Sidney, 25, are the third generation in their family to show livestock.
Their mother, Jeri Marek, began showing cattle as a child at the Tippecanoe County Fair in Indiana and at the Indiana State Fair, just as her father had done.
“I showed Hereford cattle since I was about 5 years old,” she said. “We moved to Missouri, and I introduced showing to all three daughters.”
They took to it naturally.
“They’ve been through 4-H, they’ve been through FFA,” she said. “This is my last daughter’s final year of showing as a junior exhibitor. If they want to continue showing at the State Fair, it will just be in open show.”
She spoke while Halley was exhibiting a show goat in the 103-year-old Swine Pavilion on the Missouri State Fairgrounds.
The grounds have evolved, but most of the main buildings are very much the same as they were over a century ago.
Beyond the Swine Pavilion’s soaring arches, vaults and trusses, revelers boarded carnival rides, packed into the circus tent and consumed every kind of deep-fried novelty imaginable.
The Mareks prefer such traditions as visiting the Dairy Barn for an ice cream, having a corn dog and watching the livestock exhibitors come and go inside the massive, 1905-vintage Colosseum.
“In my 21 years of coming to the State Fair, I have never ridden a carnival ride,” Halley tells people. “You really need to come up to the other side. There’s a whole different world you’re not experiencing!”
“A family thing”
Rebecca Bentley, a member of the Mission of St. Joseph at Hurricane Branch, recently stepped down as youth program associate for the University of Missouri Extension in Chariton County.
For years, she’s been encouraging young people who exhibit and give demonstrations at the county and state fairs.
“I always try to catch as many of them as possible,” she said. “I love to watch them shine.”
She believes farming communities are ideal places to raise families in faith.
“Kids, farm and church are all important to us here in our rural community,” she said.
The State Fair, held each August in Sedalia, is the culmination of the livestock exhibition season.
“It’s a family thing,” said Mrs. Fuller. “We come down here for vacation every year, and it’s an industry we’ve grown up in and it’s given us a platform to continue on with it, even after our showing careers are done.
“Because then, it’s about giving back to the youth who are now in those positions we were once in,” she said, “seeing them get started and having the success we’ve had.”
She said the world depends on the agriculture industry.
“A lot of this, the youth in agriculture, is the future of this country,” she stated. “Showing livestock teaches kids responsibility, work ethic, and how to be a good person in this world. I truly think it’s good to be here at the Missouri State Fair.”
Halley was 2 months old when she attended her first State Fair.
“I beat her on that,” said Mrs. Fuller, her sister. “I was 2 weeks old at my first State Fair.”
Their mother, Jeri, was a few weeks old at her first Indiana State Fair.
“It’s a family tradition,” she said. “It’s just a family thing.”
On exhibiting days at the Fair, the Mareks are up by 6 a.m. and turn in by 9 p.m.
“We go back to the camper, we fix supper after all the animals are taken care of, and we all just sit and kind of reflect on the day and enjoy each other’s company, then go to bed exhausted,” said Mrs. Marek.
The Mareks exhibited at their first Chariton County Fair in 2006 and their first Missouri State Fair in 2008 and haven’t missed one since then — including the abbreviated offering during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“I started with bucket cattle in 2009,” said Sidney. “I stuck with the big heifers and steers ever since, until 2021. That was my last year of FFA showing.”
Her very first show was in the springtime.
“My Dad told me my heifer was a little antsy, ‘so don’t let go,’” she recalled. “She got antsy and started running. I didn’t let go, and I took a little nosedive.”
The heifer ended up getting loose.
“I did eventually let go, but I was face-down,” said Sidney.
She was fine, “but I probably cried a little, because I was 8.”
“She shook it off and kept on going,” her mother noted.
Sidney said showing livestock is fun.
“Well, it’s not ALWAYS fun,” she said. “But it’s something we do together. You do it for so long, it’s hard to stop it.”
Hard work
The Henkes and Mareks are part of each other’s “show family.”
“You can show all year ’round,” said Paul Henke, “so, it’s great having people you go to the show with and hang out with.
“We’ve had a lot of fun with a lot of people,” he said. “We talk to our friends in the barn, and we give high-fives to people even if you don’t win. That’s what it’s all about.”
A few years ago, Dawson asked Mrs. Fuller’s future husband, J.T. where his wife is.
He answered, “At the moment, I still need to make her my wife.”
He proposed to her at a State Fair concert the following year.
Dawson got to be in their wedding.
The Henkes show Shorthorn cattle.
“We show mostly breeding stock, mostly heifers and bulls,” said Bev Henke.
She said the judges base their evaluations on each animal’s structure, soundness and muscling.
“For the breeding stock, they notice the femininity of the heifers and the stoutness of the bulls,” she said. “They want to make sure they’re really sound and ready for breeding.
“Just like any other species, there’s a whole list of qualities that they’re looking for, and that changes across the species,” she said.
Procuring prize-winning specimens starts with picking out of the herd an animal that has the right structure, regularity and squareness.
“Then, you have to put a halter on them and teach them how to walk with the kids in the ring and stand up right when the judge is looking at them,” said Mrs. Henke.
Raising them right is a daily chore.
“You have to feed them the proper diet and get them the proper exercise, water them, take care of them each day and make sure their feed ration is where it needs to be,” she said.
Callie said a showing day includes getting up early, depending on how far they have to travel, and loading their animals onto the trailer.
“Then, when we get there, you have to unload it all, set it all up, wash the calves and comb them out,” said Mrs. Henke.
“These kids put in a lot of hours, a lot of hard work,” she stated. “But it’s what they love to do.”
“One of my favorite things about it is all the different shows you get to go to,” said Callie. “So many people you can meet and hang out with.”
Dawson, who started showing when he was 5, agrees.
“It’s just fun, and you make good memories and you get to spend time with your cattle and your family,” he said.
Callie and Halley took time out to attend a concert at this year’s Fair.
“Hudson Westbrook, the country artist,” said Halley.
Hard to let go
Both families talked about getting attached to the animals they raise and show at fairs.
“It’s very hard, especially when you grow up on the market-animal side of things,” said Mrs. Fuller. “You get them, especially on the cattle side, when they’re 6 months old or so, and then you raise them until they’re almost a year and a half, and then they go.
“Although I will say, these animals live a pretty great life,” she said. “They’re fed twice a day. Their hair is washed every day, they sit under fans every day.”
She recalled showing her first steer and then having to let it go.
“And the tears rolled right after that,” she said.
It’s simply part of growing up in agriculture.
“These animals do have a purpose,” she said. “While we do show them, they are market animals.”
“They’re used to feed the world,” Halley stated. “You have to have the mindset that this is helping the industry, that this is going to help feed somebody in my community. It’s going to a better cause.”
Mrs. Marek said people used to call her daughter Sidney “the Calf Whisperer.”
“She’d be out there showing her calf, and you could see her talking to, whispering to it in the ear, trying to keep it calm,” she said.
“Once you get ’em, they’re like puppy dogs,” said Dawson. “Once you get them halter-broke and work with them every day, they become like big pets, and you get really attached. It’s hard to let go.
“But I sure like steak,” he added.
Not about winning
Mr. Henke said nothing feels quite like walking into the State Fair Colosseum, which hasn’t changed in over a century.
As a child, he exhibited the same breed of cattle there that his children now show.
“I think the calves are a lot better than when I was doing it,” he said. “The competition is harder, though.”
Mrs. Marek said showing livestock is “an expensive hobby.”
“But the kids, if they’re in it, can learn so much from it,” she said. “Responsibility. The community that you meet. If you don’t win in a class, you bounce back from it and you keep on going.”
It’s not about winning.
“If you quit after placing last in a class, we’d have been done years ago,” said Mrs. Marek. “It’s what you teach your kids and hopefully what they’ll teach to their own children someday.”
Mr. Henke is grateful to the Mareks for showing his children how to get back into showing.
“Things change over the years, things like how to set the hair and do the tail,” he said. “The Mareks have been a huge help. They showed us the show circuit and how to get back into it.”
Mrs. Marek’s mother died a year and a half ago.
“She was a huge — probably one of their best supporters,” Mrs. Marek said through tears. “She lived just up the road from us, and she was there for us. She came to so many of the girls’ shows. Whenever she couldn’t go — when her health wasn’t good — she would call them or write them notes.”
Everything for a reason
The Henkes and Mareks pray on the road and are aware of God’s presence with them in the show ring.
“He’s who got us here, he gives us this opportunity,” said Mrs. Fuller.
“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him,” Halley stated.
“Big-time!” said Sidney. “I don’t always realize it in the moment, but you see that God was definitely with you all along.”
Callie said she and her friends get together before showing, “and we pray that we all do good and that God keeps us safe through it all.
“Everything by the grace of God,” she said. “He put everything here for a reason.”
At the end of the evening, the Mareks thank God for the day, for the people they met, for helping them take care of the animals and get through any difficult times.
“It’s not all roses in the showing industry,” Sidney noted. “There are good times and bad times, sad times and lots of fun times, and so many memories.”
Mrs. Henke believes it’s a great way to be a parent.
“It’s important to show your kids, this is where you came from and this is why we do what we do,” she stated. “You want them to be raised in a good family environment.”
Sidney said that if she has children, she hopes they’ll continue the family tradition. If that happens, she’d need to “help them remember the important things, help them not stay too mad at their siblings when it gets too competitive. Be supportive. All the good things my parents instilled in me.”
