Sam Schmillen - Iowa State Fair Sale of Champions

A lot can happen in a year, and that is no understatement for the Schmillen Family. A highlight that won’t soon be forgotten happened this past Monday, Sam making history and bringing home Grand and Reserve Champion Market Lambs at the 2021 Iowa State Fair 4-H Show. While this was truly an unmatched moment of joy for the family, the road getting here had its ups and downs.

Spring 2021 brought the typical start to a show family’s year, seeking out and gathering up the next string of potential champions. For the Schmillen’s, that meant extra busy times, as they were in the peak of lambing at the farm and working to gather lambs up for Sam’s show projects. But time stood still in mid-March with the unthinkable happening, Jill was hospitalized with multiple blood clots in her lungs and near her heart. Anyone who knows Jill, knows she’s one tough cookie, but the doctors could hardly believe she made it on the other end of this experience. Multiple procedures, long hospital stays, and lots of prayers eventually brought Jill back home and healthy.

With new perspective, and understanding of how fragile life can really be, the family took back to working on their show projects and setting goals together. With that, it’s safe to say those goals were exceeded when Iowa State Fair came around. The excitement and appreciation of this goal, could never have been fully appreciated without the path that lead them there.

If you are able, we would so appreciate your support of Sam’s amazing year at the Iowa State Fair. With your support, you’re not only helping Sam’s educational future, but the future of many other Iowa youth through the Iowa Foundation for Agricultural Advancement. For as long as the Iowa State Fair has been in existence, youth from around the state have exhibited their livestock projects with pride at the State Fairgrounds in search of a purple banner. Until the late 1980's, the kids who earned the right to be called Grand Champion were often rewarded with less than market price for their animals. In 1987 at the conclusion of another dismal sale of the champion animals, a group of livestock industry members decided that a change was in order to not only reward the hard work of the grand champion projects but to provide more incentive for others to participate in raising livestock projects. At that point, the Iowa Foundation for Agricultural Advancement was born.

The original mission was simply to provide a base level of funds to support the sale of grand and reserve champion projects for the major species at a premium. After years of success growing the Sale of Champions into the envy of many state fairs around the country, IFAA expanded giving to include scholarship programs and performance awards in order to reach more youth. Today, the IFAA offers over $200,000 per year in scholarships funded by groups such as the Governor of Iowa, Iowa Corn Growers, Bruce Rastetter, Iowa Select Farms, Sinclair Tractor, Cargill, Rain and Hail Insurance, Pioneer, HyVee, and Fareway to name a few. Support for the IFAA Sale of Champions and subsequent scholarship and awards programs has steadily grown from $50,000 the first year to $575,000 today.