Local 4-H Club members prepare for fair

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Submitted by Julie Wong, market poultry project leader for the San Carlos Eaton Hill 4-H Club.

Those kids in white are not coming to take you away, ha, ha. They are future entrepreneurs, mentors, and leaders. They are members of San Mateo County 4-H clubs.

Menlo Park youth represent a growing percentage of kids age 5-19 who participate in 4-H on the Peninsula. Currently, all are members of the San Carlos Eaton Hills 4-H Club, the closest proximity club to maintain designated 4-H farm space.

Two 4-Hers recently received recognition for leadership and scholastic achievement. Nicole Case, a Menlo Park resident and senior at Mercy High School in Burlingame, received a $500 scholarship from San Mateo County 4-H Scholarship I Trust fund. Nicole will attend the University of Idaho this fall as an animal science major. Nicole is teen leader for the San Carlos lamb project.

Peri Wong, also of Menlo Park and a junior at Summit Preparatory Charter High School, is one of 14 youth honored by being selected as 4-H State Ambassador for 2011-2012. State Ambassadors provide the face of 4-H in California and promote 4-H on the local, regional, state, and national levels.

As part of the 2011-12 team, Peri and her fellow ambassadors will plan the annual California 4-H State Leadership Conference held at one of the UC campuses. She will also have a pivotal leadership role in planning the upcoming California 4-H Centennial celebration. Peri is teen leader of the San Carlos poultry and public speaking projects, and will serve a vice-president of her club next year.

Several Menlo Park 4-Hers have been raising livestock for the San Mateo County Fair, being held June 11-19. The fair serves as a culminating event to months of training, feeding, washing, and stall-mucking, where kids take their animals to fair for evaluation.

Peri and Nicole, along with Jesse Taylor, a freshman at Summit Prep, and Kathryn Stewart, an eighth-grader at Hillview Middle School, will compete in sheep showmanship and market classes with their Suffolk and Hampshire lambs. They will sell their lambs to the highest bidders at the Junior Livestock Auction at the conclusion of fair.

Claire Woodell, a seventh-grader at Hillview, and Claire Nolasco, a fifth-grader at Encinal, will exhibit fancy poultry and show how to walk a chicken. Claire Nolasco will also bring two pair of broiler chickens to the auction.

All 4-H Club members from the Almanac circulation area wish to thank the buyers who supported them at last year’s San Mateo County Fair Youth Livestock Auction: Anne Woodell, Atlas/Pellizzari Electric, Bohannon Foundation, Brendan and Camren Visser, Bruce Knoth, Carolyn & Ron Cox, Darleen Francis, Diane Savage, Craig Kellogg and Beverley Anderson, Henry & Carol White, Jack D. Mills, Jennifer Christ, Joanne Taylor, Julie & Steve Wong, Melissa and James Stewart, Modena Concrete Pumping, Nolasco Construction, Pam Larkin, Patricia Hoo, Robert & Vickie Lewit, Rosalind Souza, The Case Family, The English Rose, Tina & Stevan Patrick, Titus Lai and Jenny Hom, and Winston and Julia Wyckoff.

We hope to see you again at the 2011 auction. Save the date – Saturday, June 18, 2011, at the San Mateo County Fair, 2495 South Delaware St., San Mateo. The auction begins at 10 a.m. at the livestock arena. (To learn how you can become a 2011 Youth Livestock Supporter, call 650-574-3247 x360 or email larvin@smeventcenter.com.)

The 4-H club originally began as a way to teach new farming and ranching techniques to rural youth, but projects now include robotics, beekeeping, skateboarding, and duct-tape construction. Administered under the auspices of the University of California Cooperative Extension, 4-H helps kids become confident leaders who are connected to their community while learning about almost any topic that interests them.

For more information about 4-H, see ca4h.org or contact Julie_figliozzi@yahoo.com.