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It's soon show time for Jessica and Molly Photo by Jim Craven Jessica Anderson leads Molly around her pen in preparation for the Jackson County Fair, which starts today. By MARK FREEMAN Editors note : The Mail Tribune has followed Jessica Anderson as she raises and prepares her pig, Molly, for entrance in the 4-H competition and sale at the Jackson County Fair. CENTRAL POINT -- Ignoring the firm taps from Jessica Anderson's cane, Molly the pig shuffled her 226-pound body across the pen, through the mud and out the pen door, flicking mud on mom Christine Anderson's shoes along the way. "Molly! Get back here," Jessica chided. "And stay out of the mud!" Both pig and girl will need to perform better this week if 10-year-old Jessica and Molly, her 4-H pig project, expect to fare well at the Jackson County Fair. The porky swine and the young girl had run out of time to work out the showmanship kinks before Jessica shows off Molly's fat hams and lean chops today and Wednesday to judges in the 4-H swine competition. Jessica and Molly have spent the past four months growing and learning together as girl and pig, with the former blossoming in self-confident maturity and the latter in pure girth. Their time and trials together will build to a crescendo today and Wednesday when Jessica is one of about 300 kids to parade their pigs for judging and sale -- which will bring Jessica a fat check and a nice ribbon if she does well. "The thing I've been most impressed with is her showmanship," says Melissa Townsend, a 19-year-old 4-H veteran who is coaching Jessica through her inaugural pig-rearing season. "I get so stressed telling her what to do," Townsend says. "Then she just goes out and pulls it off. "She's ready," Townsend says. And it's taken both Jessica and Molly a lot of time and effort to get here. Molly was a 43-pound piglet March 18 when Jessica plunked down $100 and bought her from an Eagle Point rancher. Jessica, a new 4-Her from Eagle Point, has worked constantly to nurture Molly into a marketable swine. Molly has lived in a pen at Townsend's rural Central Point ranch, which Jessica visits regularly to tend to her swine. While learning how to effectively show Molly and while seeking potential buyers to bid on the pig at Wednesday's auction, Jessica has learned about discipline, communication, marketing and the stick-to-it attitude that her mother, Christine, hoped her daughter would take away from 4-H. Jessica has proven to be a quick study ready to absorb the Head, Heart, Hands and Health aspects that give 4-H its name. At first, Jessica saw Molly more as a pet. She has since come to realize the firm reality of ranching -- that her job is to prepare Molly for sale and butchering. In the 4-H clover, the heart is important, but the head comes first. "At this point, she's seeing dollar signs," Christine Anderson says. "I think at auction time, when someone buys her, it will hit home, that this is it." Sunday, Jessica joined her fellow Valley View Livestock 4-H'ers in cleaning and decorating their pig pens at the fairgrounds. Monday saw Molly trucked to the fair, where she was weighed and ear-tagged so as not to get confused with other pigs. Today is Molly's judging for her marketability as a meat hog; Wednesday, Jessica gets judged for how well she shows her pig, followed by the auction that night. In all cases, Jessica will use a wooden cane to walk Molly around a pen while a judge casts a critical eye at both girl and pig. Jessica will keep eye contact with the judge, yet never get between the judge and the pig. That way, the judge can peer at Molly's body parts to analyze the pig's table-worthiness. And Molly is totally table-worthy, Jessica says. "You can see the muscles down there," Jessica says, pointing to Molly's rear. "She has," she says, "good hams." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA