Putting on a "testicle festival" in Utah's Mormon country takes a lot of ... guts

WOODRUFF, Utah — The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.

Take, for instance, the genesis of Utah's own testicle festival.

Kalon Downing was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Phoenix, his mind wandering back home to the high country of Utah's northeast corner.

Wouldn't it be a ball, he and a companion from Rock Springs, Wyo., dreamed, to get together some ranching friends, fry up some Rocky Mountain oysters and listen to some good country musicians?

"I had too much time on my hands, sitting in meetings," recalled the matter-of-fact cowboy, wearing a dusty felt hat, red plaid shirt, jeans and spurs on his boots.

Downing came home from Arizona in December 2000, and late the next spring, after he and other Rich County ranchers were finished branding and turning their cattle onto summer range, the first Black Gold Cattle Co. Testicle Festival was born.

The 2006 testicle festival, which wound up here Saturday night, has always revolved around the ribald — and old — cowboy practice of eating the testicles of calves that have been neutered and bulls that have been put out to permanent pasture.

But it has evolved into more than that. Now lasting three days over two weekends, the festival revives the kind of rodeo old-timers talk about, with fathers and sons pretending to brand and doctor calves together in the arena, and cowboys using their working saddles and horses. Western musicians perform on a stage outside the arena each night.

The testicle festival also has become quite a fundraiser. The 700 or 800 who come for the dinner buy T-shirts, vests and hats, which this year featured a picture of a standing bull with testicles on a stick and the words "What's in your sac lunch?"

Each year, the novelties sell fast and so do raffle tickets. This year, about $4,500 was raised, adding to the $15,000 that previously has been given to children with medical problems.

The festival features the name of the bull-raising business Downing started at age 17, Black Gold, but the profit goes to charity.

"Every kid we've ever done a benefit for got better," boasted Hardy Downing, Kalon's father, who spent Saturday afternoon in a tent, battering and deep-frying 250 pounds of Rocky Mountain oysters.

Some folks around Woodruff — the nearest non-Mormon church is 23 miles away in Evanston, Wyo. — have "asked nicely" that Downing remove the word "testicle" from the name of the festival. The first year, someone even cut the word out of his big banner on Main Street.

But the returned missionary is not about to back down.

"It does too much good and it's fun," Downing said. "This is cowboy country and there's no shame in this."

Fifteen-year-old Mitchell Whatcott agreed. He was munching oysters from his plate like a city boy might snack on popcorn chicken as he waited in line for the rest of Saturday's feast — roast beef, dutch oven potatoes, baked beans and peach cobbler.

"We eat 'em when we're branding," Whatcott said.

In fact, many from ranching families in Rich County say they prefer the oysters they eat at the corral each spring, when they are "doctoring" the yearling calves, giving them shots, branding them and removing their small, oysterlike testicles.

The animals will then grow to become steers with one interest in life — grass — rather than randy bulls.

Fruits of castration

For the first few years of the festival, the Downings would collect calf testicles from ranchers throughout the region.

"Our family would sit home at nights, cleaning them," remembered Kalon's mother, Linda Downing. "Some are pretty dirty."

But to feed one person requires the testicles of about 10 calves, so the year the Downings — expecting 400 — cleaned the fruits of 4,000 castrations was the last.

Now, Downing buys testicles harvested from bulls being slaughtered by a meat packer in Salt Lake City. They're not as tender, but they come clean and cut in one-inch chunks, like chicken ready for a stir-fry.

"They're good, but I like the fresh ones better," said Dustin Wasden of Randolph, a transplant from West Jordan.

Wasden's friends from the big city joined him and his wife, Danelle, a Rich County native, on Saturday night.

"It's just not natural," said Christopher Tye of Salt Lake City, who carefully avoided the deep-fried oysters on his plate as he ate the rest of his food first.

Last year, he sampled the oysters first and could eat nothing else. "I psyched myself out."

His cousin, Jeremy Tye, teased his wife, Lacie, as she took her first bite of Rocky Mountain oyster. "Remember," he said. "You're eating cows' balls."

Lacie Tye grimaced. "They're tasteless, but it's the thought."

The ranchers from around Rich County have fun sharing this slice of their life with city-slickers.

Rancher Ron Stuart said it's also good for the community to come together at a time when they're turning their attention to the next season in the cycle of ranch life: raising hay.

Sure, some people object to the word "testicle," he said.

"I'm sure they've got their reasons. But they must not understand. We don't consider it gross. It's our way of life."