By Keiana Cramblett —
COARSEGOLD — As fair week ends and the fairgrounds empty once more, I think back to all the hard work that goes into raising a animal for fair.
Most people think we just give our animals food and water for a few months and that’s it. What they don’t know is the months of hard work it takes to raise a market-ready animal. We work hard to train our animals to show during fair. With my pigs, I train them to walk and turn for a month and a half before fair to gain stamina, because our showmanship classes tend to last 15-20 minutes if not longer. We keep our pens clean, we groom our animals as well as administering any antibiotics or other medications our animals may need.
The week before is the craziest week of the year. We are working our animals harder than ever to get them ready for fair and getting our tack and food together to take to fair. We load our animals into the trailers and take them down to the fairgrounds.During fair week, we weigh in our animals to make sure the are able to be sold in the auction. We show our animals in market classes to make sure they are market acceptable and to hear any feedback the judge may have to make our future animals better. Also we show our animals in a showmanship class to show that we as exhibitors can control our animals in the show ring.
All of our hard work is paid off when we sell our animals in the fairs auction,
Other News:
● Our club did well at this year’s Chowchilla Fair. Eden Hussey got 1st in class, Sara Lynch got Champion AOB Sheep , Emma Hussey was awarded Outstanding 4-H fine arts award, Cambria got Best of show for her sewing project leggings, and I got 7th in Market , 9th in Advanced Showmanship, and the wreath that I made out of my chickens feathers got 1st place.
● At fashion revue we had 4 of our clubs clothing and textile members participate. Makayla Beckstead was the county winner in the Intermediate Traditional category. She will be competing at the State Competition at UC Davis on June 2nd. Good Luck Makayla!
● 4-H State Leadership Conference is July 26-29.
● Our next Community meeting will be Thursday, June 14th at 7pm at the Coarsegold Community Center. Please bring your completed record books to the meeting to turn in.
● July 1st is the start of the next 4-H year. Membership dues will be $40 for this next year.
● Officer elections are coming up on August 9th.
Project Reports:
● Archery: Our next meeting is on May 21st at 3:30, meet at the Black Hawk Lodge.
● Horse : our next meeting is May 28th at 4pm . Abigail LeSpada attended the Chowchilla Fair Horse show and placed 1st in English, Western and Advanced Showmanship. Abigail will attend Round Robin at Chowchilla Fair.
● Swine: At our last meeting, we shaved our pigs and got ready to go to fair. Our next meeting date and time will be discussed.
● Sheep and Goat : Our last meeting was May 9th . We got ready for Chowchilla Fair.
● Community Pride: There was no community pride this month as most of us were getting ready for fair.
● Poultry : We meet every 1st Tuesday of the month at the Yosemite Bank Conference room. Last meeting we worked in our record books.
● Clothing and Textile: Our next meeting will be May 24th at the Oakhurst medical group conference room.
● Llama: Our next meeting will be May 29th. Makayla Beckstead attended the Kids and Camelids show. Makayla and her llama Harley were the overall Grand Champions in the performance classes.
Our leader is Pat Strimling and if you would like to join our 4-H club , you can call her at (559)-683-5149. Anyone can join! You don’t have to be a student at Coarsegold Elementary to be a member of Coarsegold 4-H. You can live anywhere in madera county as long as you can come to our meetings. Our group meetings are at 7 p.m. every 2nd Thursday of the month at the Coarsegold Community center.
Our June meeting will be June 14th, 2018. Come and join us, we would love to see you at our next meeting. We have a range of Projects available including Archery, Arts & Crafts, Community Pride, Poultry, Swine< Sheep and Goat, Llama, Horse and Clothing & Textile.
Madera County 4-H youth program is a non-profit organization for youths are 9 year’s old or who completed the 3rd grade , and up to 19 years of age. Mini- members accepted from age 7 in select projects. All youth and adults in Madera county are invited to participate in the 4-H program, regardless of race, creed, religion, color, national origin, sex, physical or mental handicap.
Keiana Cramblett is the current Club Reporter.
