For the Davis family, the holidays are not just Christmas and New Year’s. The annual Pennsylvania Farm Show also makes the list.

The Fayette County family has been going to the Farm Show since 2005.

Their youngest child, Maddox, now 12, is showing a dairy goat and cow at this year’s show, which opens Saturday at the Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg. The show is the largest indoor agricultural exposition of its kind in the country, with nearly 6,000 animals, 10,000 competitive exhibits and 300 commercial exhibits.

Matthew and Joy Davis, who operate Davis Pride Farm in Lower Tyrone Township, take pride in the fact that they’ve missed only one Farm Show since 2005. Joy Davis has been showing livestock there since she was in 4-H in the late 1980s.

“There aren’t many people from Western Pennsylvania who go out,” she said. “We’re the only dairy farm that takes dairy cows from out this way.”

Davis Pride Farm custom raises dairy heifers of varying breeds — Holstein, Jersey, Guernsey, brown Swiss — for other dairy farms in southwestern Pennsylvania.

“What I tell people is it’s kind of like boarding school for cows. We raise them from the time they are young and until they’re ready for work,” she said.

For the Farm Show, the family takes non-milking heifers, market lambs and dairy goats. “You’re trying to pack the trailer so that everybody is comfortable. If it doesn’t fit, we don’t take it,” Davis said.

The family then makes the trek on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. This year, they’ll be going in shifts. Daughter Madison, 16, will go with a family friend on Friday so that she can show Miles, her 8-month-old market lamb, on Saturday.

“I like going to show my animals and to see my friends that I don’t see any other time of the year,” she said.

The rest of the family will leave Monday night, along with a dairy goat and seven heifers. Maddox plans to show the goat, named Riley, and one of the cows, while Mason, 18, will show two heifers.

“Madison’s very competitive,” her mother said. “You go into the ring with an attitude that you want to win. As long as you’ve done your best, that’s all you can do.”

Madison said her earliest memory of the Farm Show is about seven years ago, when the entire family got sick with the flu. “We slept all day,” she said.

Among her favorite things at the show are the milkshakes sold by the Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association. “They’re the best milkshakes ever,” she said.

The family also likes to sample the other food offerings, including anything new that’s being introduced. This year, it most likely will be the PA Dairymen’s Grilled Cheese Stix — mozzarella cheese sandwiched between Martin’s potato bread and served with a side of marinara sauce.

Joy Davis said her highlight is the camaraderie of the farm families and the friends they get to see every year.

“It’s kind of like our catch-up time,” she said. “We actually have a tight-knit family that we see only three times a year, and the Farm Show’s one of them.”

The families, which hail from Bedford, State College and Harrisburg, show their animals together and hang out. “They’re very good friends, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said.

The Davises also have made friends with non-farming families who have become Farm Show regulars. In that sense, the Farm Show is a form of outreach to the public and a way to promote the state’s struggling dairy industry, she said.

“I think it’s important for the kids to get out there and meet the different people who don’t come from an agricultural background,” Davis said. “I would say there’s 100,000 people who go through that building — only one out of 100 is a farm person.”

“It’s important for the kids to know that not everybody understands what we do, so we take a lot of pride in it. We put up a big display. We make sure our cows are at their best,” she said.

Pennsylvania is the nation’s sixth-largest dairy producer, and dairy constitutes one third of the total agricultural output for the state.

Unity dairy farmer Jason Frye of Pleasant Lane Farms has been to the Farm Show many times, mostly as a spectator. On Wednesday, he will be there to speak to public officials about his farm’s latest cheese-making initiative.

“There’s definitely a lot of networking that happens, even if you’re not an exhibitor. The state does a good job of pulling people together,” Frye said. “It’s a great networking event for farmers, producers and consumers.”

Frye was invited by Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding’s office because the cheese-making project fits into this year’s Farm Show theme “Imagine the Opportunities,” he said.

Pleasant Lane Farms received a grant from the new Pennsylvania Dairy Investment Program last year to add cheese to its operations. In August, the farm broke ground on a facility that will house robotic milking, cheese-making operations and a learning lab.

The multi-purpose building is nearing completion and likely will have a grand opening in May, Frye said.

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