Do Meta Query based on Custom Field

I’m trying to filter my query by using a custom field I add to a page. I’m filtering by year. By adding a custom field “year” and the value. The problem seems to be that it’s not outputting the actual value into my query. I know this is the case because if I change ‘value’ => $year to ‘value’ => 2012 it changes my results. What am I doing wrong?

My code is

<?php $year = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'year', true); ?>
            		<?php $args = array( 'post_type' => 'cattle_champion',
                            'posts_per_page' => -1,
                            'order' => 'DESC',
                            'meta_query' => array(
                                array(
                                    'key' => 'show_year',
                                    'value' => $year,
                                    'compare' => 'LIKE',
                                ),
                                array(
                                    'key' => 'show_level',
                                    'value' => 'county',
                                    'compare' => 'LIKE',
                                )
                            )
                           );
							$loop = new WP_Query( $args );
							while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post() ?>