President's Project: To Make the Best Better!

 

I think I've dotted all my Is and crossed all my Ts now. On March 11, I installed my friend, Millie, as the next president of the Kansas Master Farm Homemakers Guild. And with that installation, I finished five years serving as an officer in the organization. (Randy finished up five years as an officer with Kansas Master Farmers.) Last week, I completed paperwork and wrote letters and thank you notes to end my term.

On the women's side, tradition has it that the outgoing president gets to choose a President's Project. Members - and others - are invited to contribute to a project of her choosing. 

I contacted Kansas 4-H Foundation Director Jake Worcester prior to the meeting for some ideas. I told him that 4-H foods and nutrition, as well as photography, were among my passions. After talking with Kansas 4-H state leaders, he suggested a project to help honor foods and nutrition exhibitors at the Kansas State Fair.

Foods and nutrition 4-H members have their food exhibits judged early on at the fair. There's only room for a few of those exhibits. And even those exhibits don't look too tasty by the end of the 10-day fair. 

The digital display board will be something similar to this.

My President's Project will help provide a digital display board in Centennial Hall on the Kansas State Fairgrounds where photos of the 4-Hers and their foods can be displayed during the duration of the state fair. It's a pilot project. If this display board works well, Kansas 4-H may add similar displays to honor other projects at the fair. 

Several of my fellow Kansas Master Farm Homemakers contributed to the digital display board. I know there are others of my friends whose roots in the 4-H program go just as deep as mine. If you'd like to contribute to the KMFHG President's Project, you may send a check made out to the Kansas 4-H Foundation with your contribution to:

 

Kansas 4-H Foundation

1680 Charles Pl., Suite 100

Manhattan, KS 66502

Please make a note that it should go toward the KMFHG President's Project.

The project was the perfect choice for me. 

I was a foods and nutrition member back in the 1960s & '70s in Pratt County.

 From the very first year of Jill's 4-H career, foods and nutrition was a favorite project.

Jill's first food demonstration on making a Raggedy Ann Salad

Foods demonstrations and exhibits were central to Jill's 4-H experience.  Jill and her friend, Holly, made dozens of pretzels one year. They made dozens of dinner rolls another. And they earned the right to take both those demonstrations to regional club day and the state fair.

Jill's friend, Holly, & Jill making pretzels for a demonstration

 

By the time she was veteran 4-Her, Jill was teaching others, and serving as a foods superintendent at the county fair.

She was the state award winner in the 4-H Foods and Nutrition Project her senior year.  

Last year, Kinley had her first experience as a foods and nutrition exhibitor at the Shawnee County Fair. She also gave her first foods talk for county club day, though it was a different experience having to do it on Zoom.

But this winter, she got to give her first in-person foods demonstration, making Energy Bites. She got a blue ribbon.

Brooke just began her 4-H journey last fall. But her very first Show and Tell at county club day was on foods and nutrition and My Plate.

The girls are the fourth generation in our family to be involved in the Kansas 4-H program. My parents were members back in the 1940s in Pratt County. Both were members of the Lincoln Bluebirds 4-H Club in Pratt County, the club that my siblings and I later joined. (During my time in the club, we consolidated with another club and became the Lincoln Climbers.)

Bob & Janis Moore - Pratt County Fair service award recipients

 in 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

All four of their children and all seven of their grandchildren were part of the 4-H program, two in Pratt County in the same club their grandparents attended, two in Stafford County and three in Clay County. Now that continues for five of their 10 great-grandchildren in Clay and Shawnee Counties.

Randy's parents were leaders in the Stafford County 4-H program, too, though we're not sure they were 4-H members themselves. For a dozen years, Randy & I were community leaders of the Corn Valley 4-H Club, the same club Randy was a part of back when he took his first cow to the fair. I'm still the 4-H foods superintendent at the Stafford County Fair.

In 2006, we celebrated 100 years of Kansas 4-H. The youth program has been part of the national landscape since 1902.

The 4-H website says:

The 4-H idea is simple: help young people and their families gain the skills they need to be proactive forces in their communities and develop ideas for a more innovative economy. That idea was the catalyst to begin the 4-H movement, and those values continue today.

The 4-H program continues to MAKE THE BEST BETTER!

I'm thankful that it's been all that and more for my family ... and will continue to be.

Kinley & Eric before their shift at the pancake feed. As Uncle Brent says, 4-H t-shirts haven't evolved a lot from the '90s.

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A little more history: The Kansas Master Farmer award was started in 1927, by then-Kansas Farmer publisher Sen. Arthur Capper. A year later, The Farmer’s Wife magazine, which is no longer in print, started the Master Farm Homemaker Guild, with help from Kansas State University. More than 400 farm couples have been recognized and have become members of the Kansas Master Farmer Association and the Kansas Master Farm Homemakers Guild. The goal was to publicly honor excellence in farming, homemaking, farm living and rural citizenship. In 1953, Kansas State University Cooperative Extension Service took on the duty of the selection process and coordination of the annual honor banquet. Today, K-State Research and Extension and Kansas Farmer magazine co-sponsor the program, with financial support from Kansas Farm Bureau, Frontier Farm Credit and American AgCredit.