4H Banquet 2009

The PEC 4H Sheep Club was in charge of hosting the event this year. It's such a small club that they have never been hosts before, but the kids (and leaders ;-) ...) did a masterful job. I just have a few photos of the event. My favourite is this one :-).


MC's for the evening were Katlyn and Mikaela (centre); Shannon and Alison assisted by gathering up awards and passing them to the appropriate presenter.

The theme was "4H Members are Stars" and one of the things the club did was prepare stars showcasing each of the clubs, ranging from 6 weekers to yearlong clubs, that happened in Prince Edward County in 2009. Here is the Wall of Stars.



Getting ready (Katlyn, Mikaela, and Mikaela's mom, Patti, who is the head Club honcho ;-) ...)


Getting ready ...


It was such a delight to watch the event ... the club members did a fabulous job. My only regret was not getting a photograph of the three guys in the club (Iain, Jaret and Mitchell) -- by the time my camera came out the three lads (all 12 and under) were starting to look pretty disheveled ;-). But at the start they were all in black dress pants/cargo pants, blue dress shirts and dark blue ties! They also threw themselves wholeheartedly into the dance portion afterwards, which impressed the leaders no end.

Lastly, Alison once again won the Top Member award for the 2009 Sheep Club. Here are the two trophies she received:


4H sign-up night is tonight. Claire has decided that she is done with 4H for the most part. She may continue to occasionally do lifestyle clubs, but she is no longer interested in livestock projects. Iain is looking forward to 4H sign-up night this Wednesday; he has been wanting to do the beef club for two years and I wouldn't let him until he proved his ability to persevere with an animal in the sheep club. He proved it this past summer, so I suppose I may have to consider letting him have a go at beef next year. In the mean time, he will be doing wool club this fall, along with Alison, and is quite pumped about the weaving emphasis this year.

Alison is not sure what to do about livestock club next year. Because of her planned mission trip to Brazil, she will be hard pressed to work with a lamb. As well, after having won the Top Member award two years in a row, she will not allow her name to stand next year. She may try to aim for a junior leadership position instead, if it will work out with her busy schedule.

That's it for now! More later :-).

2008 PEC 4H Sheep Club Acheivement Day, August 17, 2008

Here are the three handlers and lambs that went to the Achievement Day from our place.

Here is Claire, with FFF C0riander. I love this lamb. Her fleece is to-die-for crimpy, all the way out to the tip, and consistent all over her body. She has a lovely soft face (Arcott golden sheen) and a very sweet small head (courtesy her Shetland sire). She was extremely well behaved. She placed 2nd in the fleece class, and 3rd in intermediate showmanship.


Here is Alison with FFF Rosemary. Rosie looked REALLY great at home this morning of the show, but didn't show well. She must have been a bit stressed; she looked like an old plug during the the fleece class! Her fleece isn't quite as nice as Corianders, although it's still better than any other fleece I've had on my property so far, and she is still very consistent. She's also a bit taller than Corrie. She got a third place in the fleece class, and Alison won Senior Showmanship with her (and Reserve Champion Showmanship later in the day).



This is Amanda, our neighbour, with FFF Peppercorn. It's her first year in 4H, and her first club. She goes to the kids' school, and Alison encouraged her to join the club. Alison spent a lot of time with her; she was a great student, and was also the first to dive in and help out with chores around here this summer. She wowed everyone at the show. She won first place in Junior Showmanship, AND won first place in the fleece division. The judge made lots of nice comments about her being and up'n'comer. (Now, I personally would not have placed Pepper first in the fleece class, however the judge used to breed Texels and put a heavier emphasis on conformation). Since Pepper has Texel in her lineage, and picked up the stocky body type of her sire, she was a shoe-in over the other fleece animals. BUT, her fleece is NOT consistent, not very crimpy, and VERY inconsistent with substantial britch hair. She's very much her mom's daughter when it comes to fleece. (Her mom, Jazzy, won the Market Lamb class at last year's show).



So yes, lambs from our place took top three spots in the fleece class. I REALLY didn't want that to happen; the judge made lots of encouraging comments about how our three lambs were in top-notch perfect showing condition; perfect weight, yada, yada ... but then went on to describe how the other lambs were not. She wasn't particularly tactful. I was a little embarrassed. The other lambs in the class were purebred Shetlands, and one could say that the difference was that Shetlands don't tend to keep condition as well ... except that last year the class was all Shetlands and our little girl, from a different judge, again was much more conditioned that the others.

So.

Somehow, on our measly 3.25 acres, we do something right! Certainly one advantage we have is that we ONLY have sheep, and the other farms have mixed livestock including goats. Goats are very dominant to sheep, and I've noticed when visiting these places that their sheep all look much more nervous. I expect that affects their condition. Or perhaps it's the soymeal treats we feed them ;-).

Here's a shot of the final showmanship class.


Here's a small portion of the obstacle course. Jeff put a lot of work into it! The kids had a lot of fun, and after the show, Alison actually took all three of our lambs in-hand and put them through it :-P.




And, one of my favourite photos from the day ... Farmer Kev holding one of the lambs. Voluntarily! Really :-).


A photo of the 2008 livestock club, missing a couple of members unfortunately!

No photo day.

Every year we do the same thing on Victoria Day weekend. Our Monday is devoted to helping the Prince Edward County 4H Sheep Club do a fundraiser at Bill Stearman's Willow Garden Farm Shearing Day and Lamb Romp. Every year I commit to taking lots of awesome pictures to commemorate the day. This year, it was even more important because Alison is the new web maintenance person for several county clubs, including this one. I wanted photos of the club members helping in the community, serving local farmers, having a great time ... living a 4H life.

And every year, I come home with one photo on my camera. This year, a photo of a visitor with the bottle baby. The same photo I took last year. And likely the year before.

I give up.

It's just far too busy. Fun too, but far too busy.

We had a great day, but the weather was overcast and cold and threatening to rain. And the wind! Bill would bring a fleece to the skirting table, throw it down and it would blow right off! A lot of the normal visitors must have checked out the weather forecast and chose not to come. I don't think the event will be a significant fundraiser this year.

Yet still a good time, and an educational time for the members. And we were incredibly blessed by Angel Gilbert, who has taken over the purchasing of groceries for the BBQ. She arranged gluten-free hamburgers for our troupe (including buns), plus safe condiments and even gluten-free donuts. It was SO appreciated that we could go, and eat without me arranging or making and having to take all of our own food. Thank you!

How many 4H members does it take to tip a sheep? (aka "Learn to Do by Doing"!)

Our regular 4H meeting was out at the Gilbert's farm on Monday night, and the Smith's brought over their hoof trim chute. This is a very helpful system for farms where the sheep are kept in flock. Ours stand for us, and lift their feet helpfully like horses. We don't need this system at home.

Here is the club, working on a poor, unsuspecting Katahdin.


Little did she know what fate would await her as she walked through the chute!


How she ended up on her side:




Iain, busily working away on a hind foot. It is definitely a lot easier for the kids to gain experience with hands-on sheep care when the sheep are immobilized like this!



We brought one of our neighbours to Sheep Club this month. Amanda is super keen! We are going to try to find a lamb for her to raise at our place.

Shearing Day at WillowGarden Shetlands

The girls and I had a long, eventful day at Willow Garden Shetlands yesterday. Bill Stearman and the 4H Club have a symbiotic relationship; he provides an awesome venue for the Sheep Club to hold a fundraiser, and we serve him by doing various tasks. I barely saw Alison and Claire all day!

Claire spent most of her day at the Bake Sale table; her favourite place to be. She wowed her Junior 4H leader by her ability to add up long lists of prices in her head. Alison did a few different jobs, but spent most of her day helping the shearer along with Bill's hired hand Matt. She received kudos from him at the end of the day for her sheep wrestling abilities. Other positions the 4H kids circulated through were welcoming committee, parking attendants, gatekeeper, field supervisor (engaging visiting children so that they didn't chase the lambs through the fields!), cook at the barbeque, tour guide, skirting table assistant and clean-up. Kevin even helped out despite his allergies; he brought hamburgers for the girls and I, extra coolers and Iain out for a visit as well.

After emphatically telling someone earlier this week that "this year, I will NOT spend the day at the skirting table" ... heh, heh ... I spent the day at the skirting table. Skirting is the less than glamourous but oh-so-important task or readying the sheared fleece for storage until it can be processed. Vegetative matter, tags, felted areas are removed and then it has to be rolled "just so" and placed in an open bag in the shade. This year, however, it was FUN since Bill set it up outside in lovely dappled, breezy sunshine and beside the petting zoo area. So I skirted, taught 4H members to skirt properly, met some really great fibre people including a lovely woman who owns a MILL just 40 minutes from here (She purchased 12 fleeces! And we've already planned the road trip!), and picked up lambs so that guests could pat them. One woman took several photos; unfortunately she then asked for my name and informed me that my photo would be in the local paper. *sigh* ... I just don't care about that sort of thing and I begged her to retake with one of the 4H kids instead. She grinned and ignored me. So I then begged her to not choose one that emphasized my ... uh ... size but rather the lamb and the small children. She continued grinning and continued to ignore me. Photoshop, anyone?

Our 4H club CLEARED a whopping $534; our most successful fundraiser ever. Bill raised about $35o towards World Vision's "Mother to Child HIV prevention" program between donations and fleece sales (he took no money from fleece sales other than that necessary to pay his shearer; all the rest went to World Vision).

Afterwards, Patti had a meeting with the kids, who ALL did a fabulous, professional job with their duties, and spoke to them about what this means to the visitors. She described one family who were standing by the coverall gazing in, all excited. Patti went by to make sure everything was okay. They were staring at ... hay. Bales of hay. These folks were visiting from Toronto and had never seen bales of hay before, but had read about them in kid's books. Wow. Patti went on to say that we, or our parents, make choices to live in the area we do. In most cases, we choose to make less money by living here, but that in fact, we are rich. The kids have opportunities that other kids only dream of, opportunities in our small community to experience things, to "learn to do by doing" (4H motto), to make change and make a difference. It was a "moment".

It was a great, great day.

No photos, unfortunately, because we were all far too busy! I've included two photos of the mini-shearing day we had at our own house on Saturday. Our shearer, Dave Jones, is a lovely man and a neighbour (for the uninitiated, neighbour means in the general vicinity of the county; next-door neighbour means within a couple of km :

This is an excellent photo of Dave shearing Latifah ... you can see that he's doing a great job of getting the fleece of in one piece. This despite the fact that Latifah's fleece was a mess (definitely a second). The goal for an accomplished shearer is that there are no "second cuts"; i.e. that the clippers never once go over the same area if skin. He was also hampered by our very long extension cord, which reduced the electrical power he was working with. Only minor use of Blue Stop on Elizabeth :).


Here he is taking off Billie Holiday's lovely moorit fleece. Fleece ends get bleached by the sun, so now she and her baby are back to the same colour (moorit gulmoget).

Off topic ... Alison's babysitting job will not occur until after track and field on Saturday since Pastor Andrew hadn't booked their date yet and Tuesday was not available.

Blesssings to you all!

Our summer loaner

Since our two old girls presented us with mostly freezer lamb, we were one 4H lamb short. It has worked out beautifully. We have had a VERY generous offer; Bill Stearman, of WillowGarden Shetlands (www.willowgardenshetlands.com), that morphed into an insanely generous offer due to Bill's e-mail not functioning properly. Basically, he offered us a nice ewe and ewe lamb, we took him up on the offer and sent a couple of e-mails which he never got, and he sold the sheep yesterday. Last night the e-mail problems were discovered.

He has instead offered us the use of this lovely pair over the summer (we feed them, and Claire gets use of the ewe lamb for 4H. We do have the option to buy in the fall.) The ewe is WillowGarden Billie Holiday, a moorit smirslet gulmoget two year old ewe (likely the first smirslet gulmoget in North America ... ;-) with her mioget gulmoget ewe lamb, WillowGarden Kivu.

The words like "moorit", "smirslet" etc. are Scottish terms for colour and pattern of fleece in Shetland sheep. So Billie Holiday is a moorit (brown or rich fawn-coloured), smirslet (with white on face) gulmoget (with a pattern like a doberman; dark body with lighter points and eye flashes). Gulmogets are quite rare still in North America. The lamb is still unknown; she will be either moorit, like her mom, or mioget ( a lovely golden colour), and also is the gulmoget pattern. Lambs exhibiting the gulmoget pattern look like dobermans!

Ontario Region 3 4H Training Conference today

and I was able to go! I had a truly great time. Although as a city-bred child I was not able to do 4H, I've always been fascinated with the organization. I still remember a book I read when I was young about a girl who was involved with 4H. Then, while attending University of Guelph, I really admired the rural kids who grew up in 4H and Junior Farmers. They arrived at university with self-confidence, speaking ability, and maturity way beyond my peers.

Fast forward to my own children, and my increasing involvement with 4H. Having worked as a parent volunteer the last three years (informally) I was invited to attend the training workshop today. What a blast! Depending on what our year next year looks like, I've been planning my first club :).

Icing on the cake? A visit to Chapters after the end of the conference with one of my best buds, and my arrival home to a spotlessly clean home (courtesy of Kev and the kids -- Claire is an AMAZING cleaner in particular!), dinner on the table (courtesty of Kev) and a lovely homemade jelly roll (Alison's specialty). Yum!

Why Our Family Loves 4H (A Picture's Worth 1000 Words)