Showing animals a family tradition for Gareys

By CAROL KINSLEY
Staff Writer

GREENWOOD, Del. — Collin Garey, 13, will soon be helping pack up animals and the  family’s camper for a nine-day stay at the Delaware State Fairgrounds in Harrington.
Even though it’s not that far from home, the family likes to be on the grounds, and they enjoy camping, having just returned from a stay at Cherrystone on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
The whole family enjoys showing off their animals, too.
Collin and his older sister Bryna, 18, show goats and swine in market and breed competition.
Faith, who is 10, sticks with the goats for now.
Their father, Rob Garey, shows goats in breed competitions.
Fresh from a win at the Talbot County (Md.) Fair, where he took grand champion showman, Collin said his market goat, a wether, had won third in its class.
The class, prime weight, was of the most market-ready goats, and presented the toughest competition, he said.
Like his sister Bryna, Collin has shown a grand champion market goat more than once.
The first time he had a grand champion, Collin set a record high price per pound when he sold his market goat in the livestock sale at the fair.
The money goes in the bank, he said, and he doesn’t have to spend it on feed for his animals because he feeds his dad’s herd in exchange for the grain.
The family breeds their own Boer goats. The pigs, crossbreds, are purchased from breeders in the spring and raised through the end of July when they are shown and sold at the fair. “Dad helps with buying the pigs,” Collin said.
Collin will enter the eighth grade at Greenwood Mennonite School in the fall.
He has been active in the Westville 4-H Club for seven years.
“He’s becoming of age,” said his father, explaining how Collin helps on the family’s farm west of town. “The equipment today is so big and sophisticated, but he helps bale hay, and he drives the tractor. He’ll be making major steps in the next couple of years,” Garey said.
Asked what he wanted to be when he grows up (a polite way of asking if he wants to stay in family business — since his grandfather, Robert Garey is president of the Kent County Farm Bureau), Collin replied, “I have no clue.”
His father interjected, “He likes to engineer things, to build and invent. When you’re a farmer, you got to invent!”