Local 4-H youth ready to show off skills during the Fayette County Fair
In Fayette County, 4-H is thriving and its participants are ready to showcase their talents at the Fayette County Fair, said Jennifer Eichert, the county’s 4-H educator.
“We have about 450 traditional 4-H members that belong to clubs,” she said. “I know we’re in all school districts in Fayette County, and if I were to guess, I’d say this year we reached about 2,500 students through the school programs.”
Eichert said they have 28 4-H clubs throughout the county.
“A lot of the popular ones are the animal livestock clubs, but we also have horse clubs, robotics, cooking and sewing, creative arts,” she said.
The U.S.-wide organization has a network of about 500,000 volunteers and 3,500 professionals, according to the 4-H website.
Locally, “We have just about 100 volunteers that help with the clubs as leaders; organizing, running, helping to run the club meetings and providing some educational content in the project areas,” Eichert said.
Students also participate in a variety of school projects.
“For programs this year we had Literacy Week, and that was in March,” she said. “And we targeted kindergarten through second-graders. We worked with the Farm Bureau. And each year, the American Farm Bureau selects a book that they read. We had readers that went into the classrooms, read the story, and then did an activity with the kids.”
Eichert said the other large school program they do is embryology.
“We had 25 classrooms that provided an incubator and fertile eggs,” she said. “And then, they went through learning about the life cycle and they hatched the chicks from the fertile eggs. … We also had a program where we did robotics with kids. We went in and taught them coding and they used the Spike Prime robotics kits, and then we culminated that with a little friendly competition. We had it at Laurel Highlands Middle School. So the kids were challenged with coding a robot to use the sensors to follow a line and do a little bit of an obstacle course.”
Eichert said 4-H students also participated in a national 4-H STEM challenge. This year’s theme was Explorers of the Deep.
“They learned about oceanography and then how they use robots to investigate underwater and gather data and explore underwater,” she said. “We had kids that participated in that activity, designing a robot, figuring out buoyancy, and those kinds of STEM related activities.”
Eichert said 50 of their 4-H members do a livestock project, where they learn how to raise an animal, whether it is steer, goat, lamb, or swine. They also raise rabbits and poultry.
“They will participate in the livestock shows during the (Fayette County Fair) where they compete on both the quality of the animal as well as showmanship,” she said. “And then there will be a livestock auction where they will auction those market animals and the public is invited to come and you can buy that animal. They’ll have it processed and then you have meat in your freezer.”
There are also four active 4-H horse clubs in Fayette County.
“Most of the kids ride,” she said. “We actually have three shows during the fair. They are competing in a contest to show their horsemanship skills and riding skills. And then we also have a horse-less program. So, if there are kids that might not be able to own a horse or take lessons, but they’re still interested in being around horses, learning grooming and nutrition needs, learning about breeds and things like that, we have a club that concentrates on that so they can go to the barn and learn about horses even though they might not have the ability to own their own horse.”
Eichert said they also have a Birds and Bunnies Club.
“Unfortunately, this year, because of the avian flu, poultry is banned from the fair … but we are having a virtual contest and then the rabbits will be there as well,” she said. “We’re doing a rabbit hopping contest, but then they’ll also show their breeding rabbits as well.”
The group additionally has a Creative Arts Club and a Dog Club. The former of those will enter craft projects in the youth building at the fair this year.
“They’ve also done some cooking so they can enter their muffins or brownies, whatever they learned about this year. And then we have a gardening club, so they do the growing of vegetables and plants and flowers,” said Eichert.
Fayette County’s 4-H program also offers a variety of camps and one-day events.
“We just had our local government day,” she said. “We have a competition robotics club that participates in the first Lego Leagues FTC competition. They will be at the fair as well. We are having some skill-thons in the youth building where the kids that are raising those market animals also test their knowledge on breeds and body parts and nutrition. … And to help raise some funds for 4-H, we’re having a silent auction starting on opening day (Thursday, July 27) and then we will announce the winners of that auction on Sunday evening.”
Isabel Poorbaugh, the outgoing Fayette County Fair Queen, was a long-time member of 4-H.
“I aged out last year, but I was in it for 11 years,” she said. “I loved 4-H. It was my favorite thing ever, and it was my whole life while I was in it. I showed livestock animals. That was my primary project area. But then I joined the Teen County Council in our county. And that’s when my involvement took off. I started doing public speaking. I started taking leadership roles in my clubs. I went to different events at a national level and at state level, so I got to meet a lot of people. I learned a lot of skills in team building, working with groups. And public speaking is probably one of the biggest things.”