The aura around Osceola Heritage Park in mid-February is about giving back to a community rich in tradition.
The Silver Spurs Riding Club gives back to local charities through thousands of dollars in annual donations at its biennial professional rodeos. It also gets a chance to share the rodeo experience with the community’s special needs children every year on the rodeo’s Sunday morning.
The Kissimmee Valley Livestock Show, and the hundreds of animal raisers who show them during the annual Osceola County Fair, do the same on the fair’s first Saturday. KVLS welcomes special needs children to their own livestock show, and each participant pairs up with a show “buddy”, who helps them feed, clean and groom an animal — this year it was a hog — and then “show” them in the main Livestock Show ring.
Afterwards, the children get a goody bag, along with a medal, for showing off an award-winning animal — with their help, of course.
Sixteen-year-old twins Bailee and Blake Jeannin have become annual buddies. Bailee is a former Junior Miss Silver Spurs, and has raised an award-winning hog or two. Hers was the KVLS Reserve Champion in 2020, and she was second in her division this year.
But she said she loves the time out of a busy Fair season to show what they do to some kids who might not ever get to see a hog or other farm animal up close.
“It’s such a stressful week, so doing this is a way to have some fun with some really special people,” Bailee said Saturday, as she helped eight-year-old Ian feed, brush and show her hog Barbie. “I love spending time with Ian. I think he is Barbie’s favorite!”
The Silver Spurs Riding Club began putting on a special Sunday morning rodeo for those in the special needs community about 20 years ago on rodeo weekend. Three years ago, Spurs’ member Sara Berlinsky and her fellow volunteers added the livestock show — and it’s become easier to fill the slots for exhibitors, who have stepped up to be a part of it.
“A couple of years ago I saw a letter from Perry, Georgia, where they do something similar,” Berlinsky said. “KVLS asked if we could do one, too, so we started in 2021 (after the pandemic) and had about 10 kids here, then last year it was 15, this year it was 22, and we hope to get it bigger.”
Berlinsky said it’s hard to see who’s more excited — the exhibitors, the participants or the Fair workers.
“It gives our kids an opportunity to see those kids as regular, happy people,” she said. “It’s such a blessing. I have a lot of our 4-H kids, as young as the middle school ones, who tell me, ‘Put me down, I will be there.’”
