4-H not just for farm kids

By ERIN NICHOLES Chronicle Staff Writer

Jeff Nickelson, 14, wasn't exactly eager to join a 4-H club.

"My mom made me," Jeff said. "I sort of thought it was for farm kids, like most people think."

Jeff attended his first 4-H meeting with reluctance. He was expected to choose from a list of projects, and he expected to see traditionally rural activities, such as raising livestock, on the list.

He was surprised to find aerospace.

"I plan to be an astronaut when I grow up," Jeff said.

Through 4-H, Jeff has learned to identify the balance points of an aircraft and is building a rubber-band-powered airplane. Next, he's taking up archery.

"It's just a lot of fun," he said of 4-H. "You meet a lot of new people."

A century-old country tradition, 4-H today is one of America's largest afterschool programs serving both rural and urban children. In Gallatin County, 500 kids between ages 6 and 19 participate in 24 4-H clubs, and that number is growing, said Todd Kesner, the county's 4-H extension agent.

"It definitely has its traditional aspects, but it also helps those kids that are in town with something to do," Kesner said. "It's meant to give kids a different way of looking at things through a hobby."

------

The 4-H program, which is administered through county extension services, has both changed with the times and stayed true to its roots, teaching core values of responsibility, community service and life skills.

It accomplishes those goals by catering to kids' interests, whatever they may be.

When kids join a 4-H club -- it only costs $15 a year -- they choose from a list of dozens of projects including aerospace, beef, photography, cooking, dog agility, clothing and skateboarding.

"That's what actually hooks the kid and gets him interested in 4-H," Kesner said.

In Gallatin County, popular projects are horses and pocket pets -- "mice, gerbils, tarantulas, all the things you can keep in your room that drive your mother crazy," he said.

Kids set goals -- such as breeding an award-winning rabbit or crafting a leather belt -- and meet regularly with volunteer project leaders who help them meet those goals. Every month, 4-H members attend club meetings run according to parliamentary procedure. Kids hold offices, vote on motions and make presentations.

Without even realizing it, they are learning record-keeping, government procedure and business skills.

Martin Townsend, 10, and his brother Jerry, 7, are raising rabbits in their backyard for 4-H. Martin is aiming to win an award for showing his rabbits at the Gallatin County Fair next year; his chickens won this year.

Martin feeds the mini rex rabbits one-fourth cup of pellets twice a day. He keeps precise records of their pedigrees. He breeds them to attain certain sizes and colors.

He's learning key aspects of biology and genetics, but that wasn't his goal when he chose to raise rabbits.

"I'm good at it and I like rabbits," Martin said. "It's hands on and you don't have to read books and stuff to do it."

------

Some 4-H projects, such as raising rabbits, reflect the club's agricultural roots.

It started in the late 1800s when government land-grant programs aimed to bring university agricultural research to farms and ranches.

"But trying to reach adults with university research-based knowledge was like walking into a stone wall," Kesner said.

Farmers trusted their forefathers' methods of growing grain and raising cattle, and weren't always open to science. Children, on the other hand, tend to be more open-minded, which led to the creation of Corn Club for boys, and Tomato Club for girls, Kesner said.

In the clubs, kids learned the newest methods of growing crops and raising livestock, then applied it on farms and ranches. Over the years, the clubs morphed into 4-H -- which stands for head, heart, hands and health.

"It became a rural education program for kids who lived in areas where they didn't have the same things at their disposal as kids in urban areas," including time to socialize, Kesner said.

The 4-H goals of socialization and education remain, but the organization now reaches urban areas.

"Now the catch-phrase is 'preventative education,'" he said. "We're recreating (part of) the society we had in the 1950s and 1960s. There were community-wide social standards. Now with everybody being so mobile it's easy for a kid to get lost."

New 4-H projects are the result of the organization reaching out to kids in cities. A skateboarding project that began in Gallatin County is now available to 4-H members in 37 states.

------

To remain successful, 4-H had to change with the times. So far, it's working.

In 2002, 1.7 million youth were members in 105,085 4-H clubs across the United States, the National 4-H Council says.

About 35 percent of those kids lived in towns with fewer than 10,000 people or out in the open country. About 25 percent lived in central cities of more than 50,000 people. The rest lived in towns the size of Bozeman, on farms or in suburbs, the council says.

And 4-H is growing in Gallatin County.

"We just had a whole bunch of new kids start this fall," said Pat Dusenberry, who leads the Fowler Beef and Swine 4-H Club.

In Manhattan, Brenda Townsend -- Martin's and Jerry's mom -- is heading-up a new 4-H club called the Tater Gems.

"It's a nice way for parents to be involved," Townsend said.

Caroline Dettle helped skin apples at Townsend's house recently where members of the Tater Gems were learning to make pies. Dettle's daughter, Sierra Fuchs, chose cooking as one of her projects.

"It's life skills, and we want Sierra to learn a life-skills approach to education," Dettle said of 4-H.

The program teaches life-skills by inviting kids to dive into projects with all of their senses.

The five girls in Townsend's kitchen spent two hours mixing ingredients, kneading dough, rolling pie crusts, preparing fruit and pudding fillings and using mixers. They sniffed ginger, watched how molasses creeps from a bottle and learned to measure a cup of milk.

"This is so weird," said Chiara Cross, 10, her eyes wide as she squeezed the sticky dough with her hands.

For kids who are homeschooled, 4-H offers the additional advantage of socialization.

Elisabeth DeVries, 10, and her sister Stephanie DeVries, 7, recently moved to Manhattan from Michigan, and are homeschooled.

"I wanted to meet lots of friends," Stephanie said of why she joined 4-H, a smudge of flour on her cheek.

Regardless of why a child joins 4-H or which project they choose, the objective is always the same, Dusenberry said.

"It's to teach kids, for each area in their life, to think of what they want out of it," she said.

Reader Comments