Johnson County Junior Livestock Show: FFA Carbon-Dates the Show Using Hay
Cleburne Ag Science Students Learn Their Next Stock Show Is Either the 91st or the 67th, Drill Into the Posse Grounds Hay to Settle It
CLEBURNE, Texas — A four-member team of Johnson County ag science students has submitted what it describes as the first peer-reviewed study of the Johnson County Junior Livestock Show & Youth Fair, after discovering that the show does not agree with itself about how old it is.
The paper, titled “Stratigraphic Dating of a North Texas Stock Show Using Its Own Hay,” runs 31 pages, includes nine figures and one goat, and was filed with the show office in a binder.
Farm.FM obtained a copy. It is summarized here, section by section.
Abstract: The Johnson County Junior Livestock Show Has Two Birthdays
The problem, the authors write, is documentary. In March 2012 the Joshua Star reported on the 76th annual show at the Johnson County Sheriff’s Posse grounds. Seven years earlier, the Texas House of Representatives adopted a resolution honoring the 45th annual Johnson County Junior Livestock Show and Youth Fair, praising it as a positive influence “for 45 years.”
“By our arithmetic,” the abstract reads, “the show aged 31 years between 2005 and 2012, which is faster than any steer we have ever fed, including the one that ate the bumper off a Silverado.”
The team asked the show office how old the show really is. A volunteer at the desk looked up from a stack of W-9 forms and said, “Old.” The team logged the answer in Appendix A as “consistent with both hypotheses.”
Methods: Coring Johnson County Hay at the Sheriff’s Posse Grounds
Hay is the biggest crop in Johnson County by a wide margin. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 43,566 harvested acres of hay and haylage, nearly double the county’s corn. The students reasoned that a county this committed to hay must have left some lying around the show grounds at 1315 South Main Street every January since the show began, whenever that was.
They were correct. In the northeast corner of the old barn they located a stack of bales that no living volunteer has moved, which the paper refers to as “the Formation.” Several volunteers described it as “load-bearing.” Nobody has ever checked.
Because Johnson County rules require ag mechanics projects to be built by the exhibitor within the last 12 months, with a plan and no kits, the team built its own coring drill out of a post-hole auger, a used truck axle and an electric motor from a broken feed-room fan. The drill was entered in the Ag Mechanics show in a category the superintendent created at the desk in marker: “Science, Other.”
The core came out of the Formation at a length of 11 feet, 4 inches. It was wrapped in a show blanket and laid on a folding table in the White Building, between the canned goods and the decorated cakes.
Results: The Hay Strata, the Dairy Layer and the Burleson Event
The students counted 112 distinct layers. This produced a third age for the show and, the paper concedes, “a slightly bigger problem than the one we started with.”
Local agronomy explains it. In a good year, Johnson County hay is cut more than once, leaving two or three layers per show. In a dry year, it is cut once, if at all. Overlaid against county rainfall records, the strata produced a corrected range with a confidence interval “the width of a stock trailer.”
Several layers could be identified with precision:
- A thick band of milk-replacer residue near the middle of the core, which the authors credit to dairy cattle. Johnson County still ranks 22nd in Texas in milk sales. The dairy exhibitors on the team recognized the smell at once. The others asked to be excused.
- A layer of shiny steel filings, dated with high confidence to 2005, the year the Texas House resolution says the mechanics show was first held.
- Large gaps throughout, which the team attributes to horses. Johnson County ranks 11th in Texas in horse sales and keeps 4,420 head. The paper states, “Horses have been eating the evidence for decades. We have photographs.”
The top of the core contains what the authors name the Burleson Event: a sharp, unmistakable band of rolled sod, orange survey flags and a homebuilder’s door hanger. Johnson County lost 30 percent of its land in farms between the 2017 and 2022 censuses, and the average farm shrank to 105 acres. “Geologists have the asteroid,” the paper says. “We have a cul-de-sac.”
Discussion: Why the 4-H and FFA Show Will Not Say Its Age
The authors found no evidence that the show is lying. It has simply been too busy to count. It has had more than 1,100 livestock entries to check in, by the Texas House’s own count, a Youth Fair with a strict ban on cake mixes and anything needing refrigeration, a Quality Counts requirement for every livestock exhibitor, and a rule against overnight stays that the team calls “the only regulation in Texas that a market barrow has never once questioned.”
“A show that runs this many animals through the ring in one week,” the discussion section reads, “does not stop to blow out candles.”
Peer Review, Limitations and a Goat Named Footnote
The paper was peer-reviewed by three judges who happened to be in the building. The dairy judge requested a larger sample size. The swine judge asked what any of it had to do with pigs. The lamb judge asked about the project’s structural correctness, and the students answered so thoroughly that he placed the binder second in a class it was not entered in.
The study’s chief limitation is a market wether named Footnote, who was penned within reach of the folding table during Youth Fair viewing and ate the bottom 14 inches of the core, the oldest and most important section, in under four minutes.
“The deepest layers of the Formation are now inside Footnote,” the authors write. “He is therefore the only living source on the founding of the Johnson County show. He has declined to be interviewed. We respect his position.”
The show went on around them. Exhibitors brought livestock, welding tables, patio sets and a team-built 20-foot car hauler; the Alvarado FFA alone reported $39,100 from the closing sale. The coring drill was sold in the premium sale as the team’s one non-animal item. The buyer, as is customary in a premium sale, took nothing home, and asked only whether the drill could also find his property line.
The show office has thanked the students and announced that the new banner for the Saturday sale will read: “Johnson County Junior Livestock Show & Youth Fair. Est. Between 1937 and 1961. Ask Footnote.”
Footnote has been placed on the banner committee.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- The show aged 31 years in seven years. Every ag teacher in Johnson County read that and said, “Yeah, that tracks. I’ve been doing this since August and I’m 50.”
- Nobody has moved the bottom bale in living memory because somebody said it was load-bearing. That’s not a hay stack. That’s a Texas government building.
- Three hay cuttings in a wet year, one in a dry year. The barn loft is a more accurate rain gauge than anything the county owns, and it has never once asked for funding.
- The horses have been eating the evidence. Johnson County is 11th in Texas in horses and first in the state in horses who know something and won’t say.
- The most important scientific sample in the history of the show is now inside a goat named Footnote. Every 4-H agent in America knows that’s where all the important paperwork eventually ends up.