My second day we had a camp meeting here in Morgan County with the other three agents from the counties going to camp with us. The office as a whole may be smaller but the agents here do have room for small meetings such as that one in their individual offices. We settled on T-shirt designs and scheduled a time to travel to London to meet with the camp manager at Feltner. This will be the first year for Morgan County to go to Feltner so everyone is a little apprehensive. That evening I helped the Agriculture and Natural Resources agent with a boy scouts event. They met at her farm to learn about tomatoes and using high tunnel greenhouses. The boys loved getting to play in the planting media, which they learned was different from dirt. The District Board meeting was also held during my first week of work. I feel that being able to participate in the planning and discussion of building a new extension office is a valuable experience and I am very excited to be here during this time. Many headaches come with this process but the board and agents are working very hard to ensure that the members of this county benefit from the new building. I can't wait to see the end result.
A large portion of my first two weeks have been spent hosting 100% particpation parties at the county elementary schools. If an entire classroom particpated in 4-H speech and demonstartion competitions they are rewarded with an ice cream party at their school. After ice cream the students play games, either Cloverville or in the classroom with a Wii. The kids go crazy for Cloverville, especially when the teens (and interns) play with them! In total we had four parties, the classes who didn't get to participate in the parties said that they would definitley be participating next year. Along with ice cream parties we also hosted a fashion show at one of the elementary schools for the first time. We only invited one class from one school so that we could get an idea of the interest level and work out any bugs in the plan. The fifth grade seemed to really enjoy this experience so I would expect it to become a yearly event. The 4-H teen club went to Walmart and other places to purchase new clothes for the kids to choose from. They got to keep the clothes they picked out along with deodarants. We had a runway in the gym and played music that the students walked out to, some of them really strutted their stuff!
The second week was just as busy as the first with elementary graduations and high school senior awards. I also got to help clean country hams and help with a Beef Nutrition Field Day. Meniffee County also has country hams here so they came to clean their's as well. It was extremely hot inside the building we store the hams in. One of my designated jobs was to assist with re-socking the hams and then hanging them back in the building. One could definitely lose weight ducking in and out of that building! At one of the elementary school graduations I got to present the certificates for speech and demonstration winners. I have spoken in front of crowds before, but never one quite that large. The senior awards night was somewhat sad as we gave graduation sashes to our graduating teen club members. However, I'm sure they'll be back to visit. On Friday we traveled to J.M. Feltner camp in London to tour the facility and get an idea of how the daily activites work there. Only one of the four counties, including us, going has attended camp at Feltner so touring the grounds and meeting with the camp manager made the agents feel much more comfortable. We are confident that this is going to be a great week of camp.
I can't believe that two weeks have already passed. I can already tell that this summer is going to fly by. After camp I am going to begin focusing on my intern project. Now I've got to go get ready for the JC/AC orientation that is tonight! Hope you all are having a great summer!
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