About 2 weeks before St. Patrick's day, Dad brought in the newspaper clipping announcing the upcoming parade in Manitowoc, along with the float entry form. His suggestion that we put a float in the parade, materialized into a great (hopefully annual) event!!
About a week before the big day, Kelly and I took to designing signs for our float. Here she is working in the shop. We were quite please with how they turned out, especially after finding out to have something professionally done would cost $100 - $200!! And yes, that is John Deehr green paint...finally founds a use for that stuff on our very "red" farm!!
After celebrating the Irish Mass in Manitowoc, it was off to the float. The picture below shows our "Clan"
- from left to right - Patrick (cousin), Sandie (Mom), Clara (our green calf!), Brooke (neice), Hailey (daughter), Austin (nephew), Kelsey (daughter), Brenda (employee), Julie, Nathan (nephew), Brittany (employee), Kelly (sister) and Jim (Dad).
Even Mom got into the spirit of the day, allowing us to use the same green hairspray on her that we used on the calf!! We passed out cheese, dairy coloring books, key chains and recipes to the parade attendees.
By far, the highlight of the night was watching the kids faces light up when they realized it was a real, live calf that they were seeing in downtown Manitowoc. Clara was so very well behaved (shown here with Brooke) - it can be somewhat scarry to take a living animal, on the top of a hay wagon, knowing she may or may not decide to cooperate! The event was a complete sucess, a chance for us to share our pride of our Irish heritage and our passion for farming. We look forward to doing this again next year!
Looks like a fun time and I like that you have green and black Holsteins!!!
ReplyDeleteLooks like fun was had by all! Hopefully it WILL be an annual thing..I would love to participate! :)
ReplyDelete