Announcements,
announcements, announcements, second verse same as the first a little bit
louder and a whole lot worse. Just had
to get the last of my inner camper spirit out of me. Wow has the month of June flown by. It has been filled with work activities,
workshops, and camp just to name a few.
Recently we held our first ever county livestock
day. Roughly 60 4Hers attended. This event was put on by the extension office
at our local fair grounds. Interest
within the community has grown to raise livestock animals and/or show them at
the fair. Local members from the
community who have ties to the livestock industry came and gave their advice
and expertise to 4Hers with livestock production books and/or show
animals. With tremendous community
support we had animals of every breed brought so the 4Hers could practice on
live animals.
This past week was 4-H camp at Camp Brule for Bradford,
Tioga, Susquehanna, Sullivan, and Wyoming counties. We had over two hundred 4Hers show up ranging
in ages from eight to eighteen! The days
were filled with swimming, canoeing, leather making, fishing, rifle and shotgun
shooting, hiking, outdoor cooking, animal dissection, and crafts to name just a
few. The weather wasn’t exactly sunny
and 75, but we had a blast in the rain and mud.
Nights were filled with campfire, group skits, and s’more making. For morning workshop I assisted with animal
dissection. The first day we examined
flies with magnifying glasses, broke apart corn stalks to understand
germination, and built wooden bugs. The
second day the group dissected two cow reproductive tracts. One was open meaning it was not pregnant. And
the other had a five month old calf in it.
The final day we took water samples and examined what was in the water
and dissected two cow hearts and a tongue.
The seven kids in our group had super great questions and it was great
having the nurse assist in our workshop the day we dissected the hearts. It made the learning experience a lot more meaningful
than coming from a couple of extension agents.
In the afternoon I ran the fishing workshop. I greatly enjoy covering this workshop. Helping and watching the kids fish really is
quite the sight and always provides a good laugh. I can’t begin to tell you the number of fish
hooks I tied, the number of worms I hooked, lines I pulled out of trees, and
yanking hooks out of fishes’ mouths.
But, it was all well worth it watching a first time camper catch their
first fish and helping others with a disability be able to fish. Only one boy got hooked and he took it like a
champ and was greeted by girls everywhere asking about his battle wound.
With camp now over things are busier than ever in the
office still. We have exactly one month
until our county fair! The dairy entries
are piling up and I am submitting them to construct our show catalog. Dairy day is also this coming Monday and we
are all really excited about that. This
year we are changing it up a little bit.
In the morning the 4Hers will learn how to properly fit and show their
animal. In the afternoon they will learn
how to read a pedigree and we are going to conduct a mock auction! With our county deeply rooted in the dairy
industry and many of our 4Hers owning registered animals. We believe these skills are important to
possess.
Along with all this I am continuing to scout my soybean
sentinel plot along with five other soybean fields geographically dispersed
throughout the county. Information such
as plant population, growth stage, and disease and insect pressure is then
relayed to Penn State and constructed into a field crop newsletter that is put
out every week.
Enjoy the rest of your month of June!
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