Sterling County Junior Livestock Show: Hall Clerk Books Lambs as Party Guests
Community Center Booking Clerk Processes the One-Day December Show Under the Standard Event Rental Agreement, Asks How Many Guests Will Be Eating
STERLING CITY, Texas — The Sterling County Community Center has formally processed this year’s junior livestock show under its standard four-page event rental agreement, the same form used for wedding receptions, retirement parties, fiftieth anniversaries and the occasional bake sale that gets out of hand.
“It says Event Type,” the county’s facility booking clerk, who has kept the hall calendar for nineteen years, told Farm.FM, tapping the first line with a pen she keeps on a beaded chain. “Party, Reception, Meeting, or Other. Somebody checked Other and wrote ‘lambs.’ That is not a complete answer. That is a mood.”
The show office explained that the event was the Sterling County Junior Livestock Show, which takes over the Community Center for a single day in December. The clerk thanked them, wrote “Junior Livestock Show (lambs)” in block capitals, and moved to line two.
Expected Attendance in a Sterling County With More Sheep Than Chairs
Line two asks for expected attendance, which the clerk uses to calculate tables, chairs and the size of the coffee urn. The show office estimated two hundred people. The clerk asked whether that number included the guests of honor.
It did not. Upon review, the clerk decided that it should.
Her reasoning was demographic. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture profile for Sterling County, the county is home to 7,364 sheep and lambs, 2,549 goats and 11,451 cattle, spread across 70 farms averaging 9,299 acres apiece, against a 2020 human population of 1,372. Livestock make up 98 percent of the county’s farm sales. Crops make up 2 percent.
“Sheep are the majority,” the clerk said. “If I’m renting the hall to Sterling County, I’m renting it to the sheep. The people are just the ones who can sign.”
She revised the attendance line to read “200 (human) / TBD (wool).”
Dietary Restrictions, Seating Chart and the Delaine Question
Line seven, “Dietary Restrictions (list all),” went out to every 4-H and FFA exhibitor, who are used to paperwork and frankly better at it than most of the hall’s regular renters. A Sterling City 4-H member listed her finewool lamb as “hay, show ration, will not touch anything with a tablecloth on it.” An FFA sophomore listed his market goat as “no restrictions, which is the problem.”
Line eight asks whether a seating chart will be provided. The 4-H members returned a pen map drawn to scale on graph paper, color-coded by class, with finewool, finewool crossbred and medium wool lambs grouped together, goats placed against the far wall “away from the paneling,” and the steers seated nearest the door, where they could leave first if they felt like it.
The clerk called it the best seating chart she had received since the hall opened. She asked only one question: whether the Rambouillets and the Delaines could be seated near each other without incident.
The question had history. According to the county newspaper, Delaine sheep were not shown in Sterling County at all until 1974, when six registered Delaines appeared at a show that also drew 180 market lambs and 13 registered Rambouillets. The newspaper reported no incident.
“They’re both finewool,” a 4-H member explained. “They get along. They just don’t talk about micron counts in front of each other.” The clerk wrote that down.
Food, Music and the Pig Roast That Would Have Ended an Era
The rental agreement asks whether food will be served. The show office answered “yes, continuously, mostly pellets.” Asked to name the caterer, the show office wrote the name of a feed store.
The agreement also asks whether there will be a pig roast. Here the show office was able to provide reassurance. The 2022 census counted six hogs and pigs in all of Sterling County. Hog sales for the year came to one thousand dollars.
“Six,” the clerk said. “You roast one of those and it’s not a party. It’s a population event.” She checked “No.”
The Sterling County Junior Livestock Show Meets the Christmas Calendar
The real difficulty was the calendar. The AgriLife District 7 county show schedule has listed the Sterling County show at the Community Center in early December, which means it lands squarely in the hall’s busiest season.
A holiday dinner committee, one of a dozen December bookings, had reserved the hall for the evening after the show. The clerk informed the show office that the room must be returned “in original configuration” by 5 p.m., with tables up, chairs stacked in rows of ten, and “no evidence of lambs.”
The show office asked how strictly she defined evidence. She said she has been in Sterling City long enough to know that the town won the county seat from Cummins in 1891, by a vote of 116 to 103, after the rival newspaper editors spent the campaign arguing about whose town had deeper mud and worse mosquitoes. “We won that on mud,” she said. “I will not lose it on a floor.”
The exhibitors took the deadline personally, in the good way. After the sale, the FFA chapter and the 4-H club split the hall into zones on the back of the seating chart, assigned a crew to every zone, and had the shavings bagged, the pens down, the floor swept twice and mopped once by 3:40 p.m.
The Post-Event Walkthrough and an Unexpected Request
The clerk conducted the post-event walkthrough with a clipboard and a flashlight. Her findings, entered into the standard checklist, were as follows: floors clean; tables in original configuration; restrooms satisfactory; kitchen untouched; items left behind, one show stick, eleven halters, a judge’s pencil, a Ziploc bag of feed pellets labeled “EMERGENCY,” and approximately three pounds of wool.
Under Odors, she wrote “lanolin, faint.” She considered marking this as a deficiency. A 4-H member explained that lanolin is the natural oil in wool and the main ingredient in a great many hand creams.
That evening the holiday dinner went ahead as scheduled. Guests remarked that their hands felt unusually soft after touching the tables. One asked whether they could book the same date next year, specifically because of whatever had happened in the room that morning.
By the following Monday the clerk had received four separate requests to reserve “the day after the lambs.” She has since amended the rental agreement. Line three, Preferred Date, now includes a printed checkbox reading “Day After Lamb Show (limited availability).”
The Sterling County AgriLife Extension office at the courthouse has been sent a copy of the seating chart, framed.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- The rental form asked for Event Type, and the answer was “lambs.” Honestly, that’s the most accurate thing anybody has ever written on a facility form in West Texas. Every party is “Other” if you look close enough.
- Sterling County has 7,364 sheep and 1,372 people. The sheep didn’t need to RSVP. They’re the quorum. The people are just there to hold the pens shut and sign for the coffee urn.
- The whole county has six hogs. You can’t throw a pig roast in Sterling County. That’s not a menu item, that’s a census adjustment.
- Kids built a color-coded seating chart for a whole show’s worth of livestock on graph paper and turned it in early. Grown adults planning a wedding can’t keep two coworkers apart at one table, and they get a whole year’s notice.
- The best room deodorizer in Sterling City turned out to be three pounds of wool and an FFA crew with a mop. Now the hall has a waiting list for the day after lambs. That’s the only livestock show in Texas where the hottest ticket is the day after.