4-H Memories

 I pledge my head to clearer thinking, My heart to greater loyalty, My hands to larger service, And my health to better living, For my club, my community, my country, and my world.

If you were ever a member of a 4-H Club, you can probably recite the 4-H Pledge from heart. In fact, even to this day, nearly 50 years after being a 4-H member, it still makes it way to the forefront of my mind directly following the Pledge of Allegiance. One evening at Fast Draw, I launched into the 4-H Pledge at the end of the Pledge of Allegiance...and a fair number joined me!

If you were a child in the 60's, you were probably a member of a 4-H Club. Locally we had probably about 6-8 4-H Clubs with a combined membership nearing 100 members! 4-H was in vogue!

I joined 4-H as soon as I was old enough and stayed in it until later in my high school years. I belonged to the Busy Bees 4-H Club, which was an all-girls club. Consequently, we didn't show cattle, sheep, hogs or horses, but we could cook and sew with the best of them.

To this day I can attribute many of the things I know and am able to do to the training I received in 4-H. My only project the first year was "Let's Cook!" And guess what, I learned the basics of cooking and baking. I learned how to measure ingredients correctly. I learned about oven temperatures. The one thing that didn't really take, even though my mother tried her best to teach me, was to clean up the kitchen when you were through with the project!

The second year I  added another cooking project, possibly a menu planning project in which we had to plan a menu and cook it. This is something I do almost without thinking about it these days, but I can attribute my abilities to training from my 4-H days. In the following years I learned to bake bread, cakes and pies, talents that have stood me in good stead throughout the years.

I also learned to sew. My first project was called a "quick trick skirt". You began with a piece of gingham fabric, sewed up the side seams, folded over the top and sewed a casing for elastic and ran a machine hem on the bottom. Today I could sew that together in 30 minutes, but at that time it involved many, many hours of attempting to sew straight seams, ripping out crooked seams and resewing them, hopefully straighter the second time. Eventually I took on increasingly more difficult projects which eventually trained me to sew for my own family and myself. 

One project stands out from the rest, mostly because it became a whole summer's project..."Decorate Your Room". I had just gotten my own bedroom so I had a space to decorate. I covered a can for a wastebasket, chose a color scheme and painted my room, added accents, and viola! I had a well-decorated room. This spawned an idea for a demonstration to be given at 4-H Achievement Days, "How to Make a Bed". Using a roll-away bed I practiced making that bed at least 100 times, no exaggeration! And I am fairly certain this is why I hate making a bed these days.

One memory I always have of 4-H is County Achievement Day. It was the chance to display your projects and have them judged. Even though I began my projects early in the year, the finishing touches were never put on until the day before...much the way I still manage my time! And, of course, the baking needed to be as fresh as possible, so the day (and many times the night) before Achievement Days was a flurry of activity. 

Another thing I learned in 4-H is being comfortable in front of a crowd. We had an annual speech contest, and even though public speaking will never be my thing,  I can do it if necessary. We were "strongly encouraged" by our club leaders to give demonstrations. YouTube, here I come! We usually modeled our sewing projects, so we learned to be poised and graceful. 

In addition to our projects, we had a lot of training days to learn a variety of life skills. I remember one in particular where we tried on different colors so that we knew which colors of clothing were flattering and which were not. One year we had a music appreciation training and contest at achievement days. It was kind of a first-generation Name That Tune where we listened to and became familiar with many classical scores and folk tunes. Part of one sewing project was training in fitting a pattern, a valuable tool even today.

Our club, and I think most clubs, had a lot of fun activities also. I remember going to the swimming pool as a club. I remember family picnic events. County-wide there was 4-H Sunday where we came together in a church service. 4-H really strived to make us well-rounded citizens! 

Fast forward twenty years and my own kids have become 4-H members. Since Mike and I were both involved in 4-H as young people, they got the full brunt of our expectations. Mike was an ag 4-H member who showed cattle and horses and sheep. I was a "girl" member who sewed and cooked and decorated. So our kids were coached to do it all. Those were busy years for us and them, but I can see the results in the way they manage their lives today. Heather and April have learned to cook and sew and keep house and take pictures and a lot of other things due to their involvement in 4-H. Michael has become a very capable horseman and knows cattle, much of which began with taking cattle and horse projects in 4-H. And poor Teri, who came along after her parents were old and tired of being 4-H parents, didn't really glean the benefits of 4-H. All she knows is what I taught her, which means her mending comes home to Mom still! I may have failed that child.

Things have changed so much in the 50 years since we were 4-H members. There are different kinds of projects than we had with there being a lot more variety. These days the focus is not on training girls to become homemakers so I see a lot less cooking and sewing projects. And just the numbers are down. We probably had close to 100 members county-wide in the days when we were members, and now there are around a dozen kids taking 4-H.

4-H is a family-involved project. Parental involvement is a must for the full benefits of 4-H to be realized. The projects are guides for what needs to be taught and for the best ways, but moms still need to be at the sewing machine in an advisory capacity. They still need to supervise the cooking projects, at least in the early stages of learning. It takes dads to help with the cattle, horse and other livestock projects, especially when the member is still young. But this is good as it strengthens the bonds between parents and their children. And moms and dads can still learn right along with their kids.

So the basics of 4-H are the four H's: head, heart, hands and health. The areas we hope to benefits are our club, our community, our country and our world. It's all we have to give into all the areas we can affect. If each one of us took the 4-H pledge to serious action, this would be a much better world for all. I am so thankful for that 4-H experience!