Aubrie Horwedel ended a successful, non-stop week of showing her 4-H livestock at the 2008 Antelope Valley Fair with a flourish, helping her mother,
Beverly, win the Swine Classic grand championship and capping that off with her own grand championship at the Open Heifer show the next day.
She celebrated her 18th birthday on the day of the heifer show and helped her Yorkie Lola birth purebred puppies at home in Quartz Hill that night. The next morning, she arose at 4 a.m. to catch a flight from Burbank to San Jose to make her first class on her first day of college at California State University, San Jose at 8:30 a.m.
Accompanying her on the trip north was her boyfriend,
Robert Pinzon of Palmdale, who also attends San Jose State. He had flown from that city a few days earlier to surprise Horwedel for her birthday. Both are 2008 graduates of Paraclete High School.
Horwedeland her family used a trailer on the fairgrounds as daytime headquarters for the week of the fair, going home at night to monitor the pregnant Lola.
By the final Saturday night of the Antelope Valley Fair, the most challenging part was accomplished. "I'm exhausted," she said at the time. "It was definitely worth it."
Her 2008 Fair 4-H livestock animals, she said, did "really, really well" in exhibition. Her two chickens won the title of Reserve Champion Lightweight. They brought $350 at auction.
Her pen of three fine show quality rabbits - white Californians with black ears - won Grand Champion Market Pen.
Ron Emard, partner/general manager of Robertson's Palmdale Honda, bought the trio for $2,000.00.
Horwedel's swine, a Blue Butt named
Priscilla, won first in class, third 4-H overall and Grand Champion Bred and Fed. Orthodontist
Michael Theurer bought the 132-pound pig at $4 a pound, a total of $528.00.
Buford, Horwedel's Shorthorn steer, weighed in at 1,258 pounds, taking third in class and Grand Champion Bred and Fed.
Frazier Masonry of Lancaster bought Buford at $3.75 a pound, for $4,717.50.
"The steer was from my own stock," Horwedel said. Breeding it herself kept expenses lower than if she had had to purchase a calf.
She brought her backup goat to exhibit, but it finished out of the running.
Horwedel, who has shown livestock at the Antelope Valley Fair since she was nine years old, earned the second prize for Master Showmanship this year. "My friend
Felicia Byrne won first place," she said, sounding just as pleased as if she had won it herself.
The livestock Horwedel worked so hard to raise were slaughtered immediately after they were auctioned.
"All the animals went away," she said. The slaughter is part of the county fair agreement for exhibiting market animals, and the young 4-H, Future Farmers of America, Grange and independent exhibitors accept their animals' fates.
The money the exhibitors earn at auction, the prices frequently pumped up by local businessmen, compensate for the loss of animals that become like pets as the youngsters feed and clean and spoil them. The young people not only learn how to raise market animals, they learn how to earn and manage money.
Horwedel's first class in college, the one she hurried to get to the day after winning "everything" at the heifer show, was a math class. It would seem that she already has a good handle on that subject.
"I have been saving since I was 9," Horwedel said. "I bought my first car and put money away for college." She bought her car, a used Infinity, Oct. 26 of last year. She did not take it with her to college, where she is studying nutrition and dietary science. "I love it here," Horwedel said from San Jose. "I'm homesick though."
Meanwhile in Quartz Hill, her little Lola is taking good care of the pups, a male and a female.
"I miss them so much," Horwedel said wistfully.